least by what he could see by the light of the aurora. All of the yards had neat grass, there didn’t seem to be any piles of junk lying around. He could smell a few late-blooming flowers, overlying the faint but telling scent of autumn. The living would definitely be easier in summer, but summer was over.
There were a few dim lights shining. At least one house on Myra Road had a couple of solar-powered garden lamps. The lights were far from bright; he wouldn’t have spotted them from his vantage point high on the mountain.
Then he spotted her vehicle, a small white SUV, in the carport of a one-story house with a screened porch across most of the front. The house was maybe forty, fifty years old, sturdy but without flash. A line of evergreen trees blocked the view of the neighbors’ house. The windows in the house were dark of course, and he got the sense of stillness. Deliberately he moved his gaze forward, and in the eerie red glow saw that the road dead-ended about fifty yards ahead.
“Hey.”
The single word was soft, so soft that if he wanted he could legitimately pretend he hadn’t heard it. It came from the direction of the dark porch. Maybe she thought he’d seen her, and rural manners had compelled her to greet him. Maybe she didn’t really want a conversation in the dark early-morning hours. He could keep going . . . but he’d already had this talk with himself, and look where he was.
He stopped in the middle of the road, turned his head toward the house. Yes, he could make her out, a pale blur barely visible in the dark protection of the porch.
“Hey,” he said in return.
Sela had stood in her yard for a while, face turned skyward, then returned to the porch with the intention of going back inside to try to get some sleep. The red sky held her, though, and she remained standing at the screen door just as entranced as she had been when she first saw the glow. Then she saw Ben. She recognized him almost immediately, though she felt a split second of alarm at seeing a strange man walking down her road. The smooth, silent way he moved registered with her and with some astonishment she realized she’d watched him enough that she knew how he walked, could recognize him even in the faint, eerie red glow.
Her heart began pounding.
She started to shrink back, not say anything. She had no idea why he was walking down the middle of the road in the wee hours, but one thing she did know about him was that he didn’t like interacting with others. The fact that he’d warned her about the solar storm was more astonishing than if he hadn’t. At the time she hadn’t fully appreciated what he’d done, but now she did; however well they survived this crisis, they would have been much worse off without his heads-up. The least she could do was say thank you.
“Hey,” she said, the one word all she could manage because her heart was beating so hard and she didn’t have the breath to say more. She doubted he’d be able to hear her, her voice had been so weak.
Then he stopped, looked at her, and repeated her greeting back to her. Her knees went weak, so weak she almost slumped against the screen door. Her reaction to him was so extreme she felt like a teenager; the realization was enough to strengthen her spine, her knees, and she barely trembled as she pulled open the screen door and stepped outside so he could see her, perhaps recognize her. That was as far as her determination carried her, and she sank down on the top step. She crunched her toes, the wood cool under her bare feet, and waited to see if he’d resume his walk down the road.
She expected him to; she even wanted him to. When, after a pause so long she almost stopped breathing, he turned and walked across the yard toward her, she sucked in a quick breath of . . . maybe panic, maybe excitement, likely both.
As he got closer she could make out some kind of stick across his back . . . no, a scabbard. A gunstock was protruding from it. Of course; no sane person would wander these mountains at night without the means of protecting himself from the wildlife.
He slipped the scabbard off over his