Marcus Okonkwo had driven this stretch of Montana highway three times in the past two hours, and he was starting to think the universe was telling him to turn around. The GPS kept insisting the turnoff for Whispering Pines Campground was "just ahead," but all he saw were the same endless walls of Douglas firs and the occasional deer carcass decorating the shoulder.
"Dad, you're doing the thing again," Zara said from the passenger seat, not looking up from her phone.
"What thing?"
"The thing where you tap the steering wheel with your index finger when you're anxious. Mom says you've done it since college."
Marcus forced his hand still. Twelve years old and she already had him figured out better than his therapist. "There's no signal out here anyway. You might as well put that away."
"There's one bar if I hold it up like this." She raised her phone toward the windshield. "Emi says the Perseids peak tonight. We might see like a hundred meteors an hour."
"That's why we're here, remember? No light pollution, clear skies, father-daughter bonding over the cosmos." The words came out more bitter than he'd intended. Three months since the divorce papers were signed, and he was still talking like he was pleading his case to a judge.
"There!" Zara pointed to a weathered wooden sign nearly swallowed by blackberry vines. "Whispering Pines, two miles."
The dirt road was rougher than Marcus expected, and his Subaru Outback – purchased specifically for this new "outdoorsy divorced dad" persona he was trying on – groaned over every pothole. The trees pressed closer here, their branches scraping the roof like fingernails.
The campground itself was smaller than the website had suggested. Maybe a dozen sites carved out of the forest, with a single cinder-block building that housed the bathrooms. Only two other sites were occupied: a massive RV that looked like it had been there since the Clinton administration, and a cluster of three newer trucks surrounded by military-surplus tents.
"Cozy," Zara said, and Marcus couldn't tell if she was being sarcastic.
They picked a site as far from the others as possible, though in a place this small, that still meant they could hear the country music drifting from the RV and smell whatever the truck people were cooking over their fire.
Setting up the tent became a teaching moment, which meant it took three times longer than necessary. Marcus explained each step while Zara nodded and mm-hmmed, clearly humoring him. She was good at that – pretending things were normal, that this wasn't the saddest excuse for a vacation in human history.
"Can I go explore?" she asked once the tent was more or less standing.
"Stay where I can see you."
She rolled her eyes but didn't go far, picking her way down to the small creek that ran along the campground's edge. Marcus watched her hop from stone to stone, arms out for balance, and for a moment she looked like the little girl who used to beg him to push her higher on the swings. Then she slipped, caught herself, and laughed – not a kid's laugh but something more knowing, more careful.
"You folks here for the shower?"
Marcus spun around. A woman had approached from the direction of the trucks, carrying a blue enamel coffee pot. She was late forties maybe, with sun-damaged skin and eyes that didn't quite match her smile.
"The meteor shower, yes," Marcus said. "Should be spectacular tonight."
The woman's smile flickered. "That's one word for it. I'm Beth. Beth Hutchinson. That's my husband Dale over there with the boys."
Marcus looked where she pointed. Three men sat around a fire pit, all in various combinations of camouflage and flannel. Dale, presumably, was the oldest – a thick-necked guy with a gray military haircut who was gesturing animatedly while he talked.
"Marcus. That's my daughter Zara down by the creek."
"Pretty girl. How old?"
"Twelve."
"Difficult age. I remember when mine were that age. They're grown now, living in California." She said California like it was a disease. "You folks from Seattle?"
He hadn't mentioned Seattle. Maybe the license plate. "That's right."
"Thought so. We get a lot of Seattle people up here. Usually earlier in the summer, though." She shifted the coffee pot to her other hand. "You sure you're here for the meteors?"
There was something off about the question, the way she asked it. "What else would we be here for?"
Beth glanced back at her husband, then leaned in closer. "The announcement. About the flare."
"What announcement?"
"The solar flare. Tonight. Dale says—" She stopped herself, shook her head. "Never mind. Dale says a lot of things. You folks enjoy your evening."
She walked away before Marcus could respond, the coffee pot sloshing as she hurried back to the trucks. One of the younger men – barely out of his teens – stood up as she approached, and Marcus heard Dale's voice carry across the campground: "What did I tell you about talking to outsiders?"
"Dad, who was that?"
Zara had returned, her sneakers squelching with creek water.
"Just a neighbor. Being friendly. You get your shoes wet?"
"They'll dry." She looked over at the truck camp. "They seem intense."
That was one word for it. As the afternoon wore on, Marcus couldn't help but notice the activity around the trucks. They were loading things, organizing supplies with military precision. Boxes of canned goods, water jugs, what looked like medical supplies. At one point, the young guy carried a rifle case from one truck to another, trying to be casual about it but failing.
"Maybe we should find another campground," Marcus suggested over their dinner of hot dogs and beans.
"Because of the weird neighbors? Dad, we're in the middle of nowhere Montana. Everyone's probably weird here."
"That's rather judgmental."
"Says the guy who wants to leave because of some people organizing their camping stuff."
She had a point. Marcus was probably just being paranoid, projecting his own anxieties onto strangers. This was supposed to be about reconnecting with Zara, not indulging his post-divorce spiral of catastrophizing everything.
As darkness fell, the truck camp grew louder. More people had arrived – two more pickups with Montana plates – and Dale was holding court around their fire, his voice rising and falling like a preacher's. Marcus caught fragments: "government knows," "electromagnetic pulse," "prepared for this," "God's plan."
"Doomsday preppers," Zara said, following his gaze. "Emi's uncle is like that. Has a whole bunker in his backyard. Her mom won't let her visit anymore."
"Smart mom."
They set up their sleeping bags outside the tent to watch for meteors. The sky was perfect – clear and moonless, the Milky Way visible as a pale river of light. Zara pointed out constellations she'd learned from her astronomy app, and for the first time all day, Marcus felt like maybe this had been a good idea.
The first meteor streaked across the sky at 9:47.
"Make a wish," Marcus said.
"That's shooting stars, Dad. These are comet debris."
"Same difference."
"Literally not."
Three more meteors in quick succession, then a brief lull. The sounds from the truck camp had changed – less talking, more movement. Engines starting.
"Mr. Okonkwo?"
Dale Hutchinson stood at the edge of their campsite, hands visible and empty in a way that suggested he was making an effort to appear non-threatening.
"Can I help you?"
"I wanted to apologize for Beth bothering you earlier. She gets anxious sometimes, says things she shouldn't."
"It's fine. She was just being friendly."
"That's kind of you to say." Dale took a step closer, still maintaining that calculated casualness. "Can I ask you something? You seem like an educated man. Software, am I right? The Subaru, the REI gear – you've got that Seattle tech look."
Marcus sat up. "Is there a point to this?"
"Just wondering if you've been following the news about the solar storm. The one NOAA detected three days ago."
"The X-class flare? Sure. They said it might cause some minor communication disruptions. Maybe some nice auroras."
Dale smiled, but it didn't reach his eyes. "That's what they're telling people. But you're smart enough to know they wouldn't cause a panic, right? Not until it was too late."
"Dad," Zara whispered.
"It's okay, sweetheart." Marcus stood up, putting himself between Dale and his daughter. "Mr. Hutchinson, I appreciate your concern, but we're just here to watch the meteor shower."
"The meteors," Dale repeated. "Right. Interesting timing, isn't it? Solar flare heading our way, and suddenly everyone wants to go camping. Almost like people know something's coming. Something big."
"We planned this trip weeks ago."
"Sure you did." Dale looked up at the sky, where another meteor was burning across the darkness. "When it hits – probably around midnight, according to my calculations – the electromagnetic pulse will knock out everything electronic within a thousand miles. Cars, phones, the grid. All of it, dead. That's why we're here, Mr. Okonkwo. Far from the cities, where things are going to get very bad very quickly."
"That's not how solar flares work—"
"You can stay here with us if you want. We have supplies, protection. That little girl of yours is going to need it when the world goes dark. Think about it."
Dale walked away without waiting for an answer. Marcus watched him return to his camp, where the others were now loading the last of their supplies into the trucks. They were leaving, Marcus realized. They were actually leaving.
"Dad, what was that about?"
"Nothing, baby. Just some confused people."
"He seemed pretty sure about that solar flare thing."
"People become sure about all kinds of things that aren't true." He pulled out his phone, surprised to find two bars of signal. A quick search showed the NOAA space weather prediction site. "See? Minor G2 geomagnetic storm possible. That's nothing. Happens all the time."
But even as he showed her the screen, Marcus noticed his battery was at 12%, despite charging it in the car earlier. And wasn't the screen flickering slightly? Or was that just his imagination?
The truck camp exodus continued. By 10:30, only Dale's original truck remained, with Dale, Beth, and the young man – their son, Marcus guessed. They sat around their fire, no longer talking, just watching the sky.
"Maybe we should sleep in the car tonight," Marcus suggested.
"Why?"
"It's getting cold."
"We have sleeping bags rated to twenty degrees."
"I know, but—"
A brilliant flash lit up the entire sky, turning night into green-tinted day for a fraction of a second. Not a meteor – something else entirely. The aurora that followed was unlike anything Marcus had ever seen, even in photographs. Curtains of green and red light rippled across the entire sky, pulsing and dancing.
"Holy shit," Zara breathed.
"Language."
"Dad, you're seeing this, right?"
He was. And he was also seeing his phone screen go completely black. Dead. He tried the power button – nothing. Around the campground, car alarms that had been set started blaring, then cut off abruptly. The RV's generator, which had been humming steadily all evening, went silent.
"Dad?"
From the truck camp, Dale's voice: "It's happening! Glory be to God, it's actually happening!"
Marcus grabbed Zara's hand. "We need to go. Right now."
"Go where? Dad, what's—"
"Just trust me."
He pulled her toward the car, fumbling for his keys. The Subaru's electronic fob did nothing. The manual key got the door open, but the engine wouldn't even try to turn over. Nothing worked – no dashboard lights, no radio, nothing.
"Problem with your vehicle?"
Dale stood behind them, that same non-smile on his face. The young man was with him, and now Marcus could see the family resemblance. Both had the same sharp jaw, the same cold eyes.
"Just a dead battery," Marcus said.
"Sure it is. Same as mine, probably. And every other car for five hundred miles." Dale pulled out what looked like an old-fashioned pocket watch. "Mechanical. Still works. 11:14 PM. The pulse hit right on schedule."
"This is insane. Solar flares don't—"
"Don't what? Don't knock out electronics? Don't cause EMPs? You sure about that, Mr. Software Engineer? Because from where I'm standing, it looks like everything just went dark, exactly like I said it would."
The aurora above them pulsed brighter, casting shifting shadows through the trees. In that unnatural light, Dale's face looked almost gleeful.
"Come with us," he said. "We've got a place about ten miles north. Old hunting cabin, no electronics, good sight lines. We can protect you and your girl when the others come."
"Others?"
"The unprepared. The desperate. When they realize the cars don't work, the phones don't work, when the food runs out in the cities... they'll come looking. And a man alone with a young daughter? You won't last two days."
"We're fine here."
Dale laughed. "No, you're really not. But I'm a Christian man, Mr. Okonkwo. I'll give you time to think about it. We'll be at our camp until dawn. After that, we're heading to the cabin, and the offer expires."
He and his son walked back to their camp. Marcus could hear Beth arguing with them, her voice high and stressed, though he couldn't make out the words.
"Dad, I'm scared."
Marcus pulled Zara close. "It's going to be okay."
"Is he right? About the electronics?"
Marcus tried his phone again. Dead. He tried the car again. Dead. Even his digital watch had stopped. But that didn't mean Dale was right about everything else. It didn't mean the world was ending.
"We're going to walk out of here," he said. "There's a ranger station about five miles back down the road. We can—"
"You're going to walk? At night? Through the forest?" Dale's son had approached quietly, and now stood just outside their campsite. "With her?"
"That's none of your concern."
"Maybe not. But my dad's right about one thing – people are going to panic. And a black man and a little girl alone on the highway? Some of those panicked people might not be very nice."
The threat was implicit but clear. Marcus felt Zara's hand tighten in his.
"Are you threatening us?"
"Just being realistic. The world just changed, Mr. Okonkwo. The old rules don't apply anymore."
He walked away, leaving them in the dancing light of the aurora. Marcus could feel Zara shaking beside him.
"Pack your backpack," he told her. "Water, any food that doesn't need cooking, flashlight if it still works, extra clothes. We're leaving."
"But he said—"
"I know what he said. We're still leaving."
They packed quickly and quietly. The mechanical flashlight Marcus had bought as a novelty still worked, its hand-crank dynamo apparently unaffected by whatever had killed the electronics. Small mercy.
The aurora was bright enough to see by, but it made everything look wrong, unnatural. The trees seemed to move in the shifting light, and more than once Marcus stopped, certain someone was following them.
They'd made it maybe a mile down the dirt road when they heard the engines.
"How are their trucks working?" Zara whispered.
Marcus remembered something about older vehicles, pre-computer engines being immune to EMPs. Of course Dale would have thought of that. The man had been planning for this, probably hoping for it.
The headlights swept around the bend, and Marcus pulled Zara into the trees. The trucks passed slowly, Dale's in the lead, another following. They were heading back toward the main road, not to their supposed cabin. Hunting.
"Stay quiet," Marcus whispered.
They waited until the engine sounds faded, then continued down the road. Another mile, maybe two. The ranger station couldn't be far now.
The shot came from behind them, the crack echoing through the forest. Marcus grabbed Zara and dove into the underbrush as a second shot followed, bark exploding from a tree just above their heads.
"That's far enough!" Dale's son's voice. He'd stayed behind, or circled back. "My dad wanted to give you a choice, but I don't think you deserve one."
Marcus pushed Zara deeper into the bushes. "Run," he whispered. "Follow the creek down. Find help."
"Dad—"
"Go!"
She went, crashing through the underbrush. Marcus stood up, making himself visible, drawing the attention.
"Let her go!" he shouted. "This is between us."
"Nothing personal, Mr. Okonkwo. But in the new world, there's no room for people who don't understand how things work."
Another shot. Marcus felt the heat of it pass his ear. He ran, not down toward the creek but up, away from Zara, making as much noise as possible. Branches tore at his clothes, roots caught his feet. Behind him, Dale's son crashed through the forest, pursuing.
The ground dropped away suddenly, and Marcus tumbled down a steep embankment, landing hard in a tangle of deadfall. His ankle screamed when he tried to stand. Above him, a flashlight beam swept through the trees.
"Marco!" A woman's voice. Beth. "Marco, stop this!"
"Dad said—"
"I don't care what your father said! This isn't what we planned. This isn't protecting ourselves, it's murder!"
"The world ended tonight, Mom. It's us or them now."
"No, it didn't. And even if it did, this isn't who we are."
Marcus heard them arguing above him, their voices getting heated. He crawled deeper into the deadfall, trying to make himself invisible.
Then, a different sound. Vehicles on the main road. Several of them, from the sound of it. And they were running – modern engines, not the old mechanical ones Dale's trucks had.
"What the hell?" Marco said.
The vehicles stopped somewhere nearby. Doors slammed. Voices called out – authoritative, organized. Marcus recognized the tone: law enforcement.
"Search and Rescue, anyone out here? We're responding to emergency beacon activation."
Emergency beacon. Marcus remembered the device clipped to Zara's backpack, a gift from her overcautious mother. GPS-enabled, but with its own separate battery and transmitter for emergencies. Apparently, whatever had killed the phones hadn't killed that.
"Here!" Marcus shouted. "Down here! Help!"
Footsteps above, lots of them. Flashlight beams – LED, modern, fully functional – swept through the forest. The world hadn't ended. The electronics weren't all dead. Either the pulse had been more limited than Dale believed, or it hadn't been an EMP at all.
"Sir, are you injured?" A ranger, rappelling down to him.
"My ankle. My daughter – she ran toward the creek. There's a man with a gun—"
"We've got her, sir. She's safe. Flagged us down on the road. Smart girl."
They helped him up the embankment. At the top, he saw Marco in handcuffs, Beth standing beside a ranger, talking rapidly. Multiple vehicles – ranger trucks, a sheriff's car, even an ambulance. All running fine, electronics intact.
"Dad!" Zara ran to him, nearly knocking him over despite his bad ankle.
"The aurora," Marcus said to the ranger. "The cars wouldn't start. The phones—"
"Geomagnetic storm, stronger than predicted but hardly catastrophic. Might have caused some temporary electrical issues, especially with older infrastructure. But nothing like..." He gestured toward where Marco was being led away. "Nothing like what these folks thought."
Dale's trucks came roaring back down the road, saw the law enforcement vehicles, and tried to turn around. They didn't get far.
As the paramedics looked at Marcus's ankle, Zara held his hand. "Did they really think the world was ending?"
"They wanted to think it," Marcus said, watching Dale being pulled from his truck, ranting about conspiracies and cover-ups. "Sometimes people need to believe the world is ending to make sense of their own problems."
"That's really sad."
It was. But watching Beth cry as her husband and son were arrested, Marcus wondered if the real tragedy wasn't that they'd believed the world was ending, but that they'd been so eager for it to be true. So ready to abandon every rule, every moral constraint, the moment they thought they could.
The aurora still danced overhead as they drove back to town in the ranger's truck, Zara curled against Marcus's side. It was beautiful, he realized. He'd been so caught up in the fear, the chaos, that he'd barely looked at it. Sheets of green and gold rippling across the entire sky, a rare display that people would talk about for years.
"We never saw the meteors," Zara said sleepily.
"There'll be other nights."
"Yeah, but this was supposed to be special. Our thing."
Marcus kissed the top of her head. "I'd say it was pretty special."
"Special is one word for it." She was quiet for a moment. "Dad? Would you have gone with them? If the world really had ended?"
"No."
"Even to protect me?"
"Especially to protect you. The world they wanted – where might makes right, where fear rules everything – that's no world for you to grow up in."
"Even if it meant we wouldn't survive?"
Marcus thought about it. "Your mom and I didn't survive as a married couple. But we're still here, still your parents. Sometimes survival isn't about lasting forever. It's about staying who you are for as long as you can."
She seemed to consider this. "That's pretty deep for someone who just fell down a hill."
"I have my moments."
They drove through the night, the aurora fading as they headed south. By the time they reached the hospital in Kalispell, only a faint green glow remained on the northern horizon. Marcus's ankle was sprained, not broken. Zara called her mother from the hospital phone, downplaying the danger, making it sound like an adventure rather than a near-tragedy.
"She wants to talk to you," Zara said, holding out the phone.
"Tell her I'll call her back."
"Dad."
He took the phone. "Hey, Priya."
"Marcus, what the hell happened? Zara said something about crazy people and guns?"
"It's a long story. Everyone's fine."
"That's not an answer."
"I know. I'll explain everything tomorrow. Tonight, I just need to get her back to the hotel, let her sleep."
A pause. "Is she really okay?"
"She's incredible. You should have seen her – kept her head, activated that beacon you got her, found help. We raised a survivor."
"We did, didn't we?" Another pause. "The meteor shower was tonight. Did you at least get to see it?"
"Not really. But we saw something else. The aurora – it was unbelievable."
"I saw the photos online. Must have been amazing in person."
"It was."
They talked for a few more minutes, logistics mostly – when he'd have Zara back, would he need help driving with his ankle. But underneath the practical conversation was something else, a warmth that hadn't been there in their recent exchanges. Not reconciliation, but maybe recognition. They'd failed at marriage, but they hadn't failed at the thing that mattered most.
Later, at the hotel, Zara sat by the window, looking north.
"You can't see it from here," Marcus said.
"I know. I was just thinking about that woman. Beth. She seemed nice at first."
"She probably is nice, under different circumstances."
"But she went along with it. Even when she knew it was wrong."
"People do that sometimes. Go along with things because it's easier than standing up."
"She stood up eventually."
"Yeah, she did."
Zara turned from the window. "I'm glad we didn't see the end of the world tonight."
"Me too, baby."
"But if we had, I'm glad I was with you."
Marcus felt his throat tighten. "Come on, time for bed. We've got a long drive tomorrow."
As Zara got ready for bed, Marcus stood at the window himself. No aurora now, just the ordinary lights of a small Montana city. Cars passed on the street below, their headlights working perfectly. The world hadn't ended. It rarely did, despite all the people who insisted it was always about to.
His phone, which the rangers had somehow revived, buzzed with a text from Priya: "Saw the news about those survivalist arrests. Thank God you're both okay. Maybe next time try mini golf?"
He smiled, typed back: "Where's the adventure in that?"
"Adventure is overrated. Bring her home safe."
"Always do."
He looked at Zara, already asleep in her bed, one hand tucked under her cheek the way she'd slept since she was a baby. They'd driven five hours to see a meteor shower and instead had seen the worst and best of human nature, all under a sky lit by solar storms. Not the father-daughter bonding experience he'd planned, but maybe the one they'd needed.
Outside, a lone meteor streaked across the sky, so quick he almost missed it. Make a wish, he thought, but couldn't think of one. They'd survived the night when the sky didn't fall. What more could he ask for?