FIVE

Skylar couldn’t stop watching the side mirror, couldn’t stop turning around to look at the disaster behind them. The smoke was black and dense and rose above the horizon like a mountain range. It made her think of that terrible morning in 2001 when the Manhattan skyline had turned apocalyptic, how she’d been sure the whole world was coming to an end. But the world hadn’t ended after 9/11. It had instead become gripped by fear and tribalism and absurdity. Divisive cable media coverage widened narrow political differences into canyons impossible to traverse, and for what? To sell bad products and even worse ideas? To separate unassuming people from their hard-won dollars?

How frivolous it all seemed now that there was an actual problem to face. Now that the world had been served an apocalypse that was not self-inflicted.

There was also this: If Thomas hadn’t offered to pick her up, if she’d hired a car service, Skylar would never have made it out of the airport. For that matter her decision to land in Dallas had been last minute. Her original flight had been direct to Los Angeles, and if she hadn’t changed her mind, that plane would have fallen out of the sky somewhere over the American heartland.

She wondered if her parents were okay. And her brother. And Roark. Why couldn’t she be facing the apocalypse with Roark instead of a man she’d met only a half hour before?

For the past ten minutes Thomas had been making steady progress on the expressway, dodging cars and declining to make eye contact with hordes of people walking in the median. Now Skylar noticed new movement in the side mirror. It was another operational vehicle, an old red pickup. When she turned around, she could see it was slowly gaining on them, slaloming between stationary cars.

“Hey,” she said. “There’s a—”

“Truck, I know. Get down.”

“Why?”

“Please.”

Skylar was not accustomed to taking orders, especially from someone she barely knew, but the commanding tone in Thomas’ voice was undeniable. She bent over awkwardly, as if she were looking for something in the floorboard.

“This is stupid.”

“We don’t know these guys.”

“But they’re going to see me doing this. I’m not invisible.”

“Yeah, but down there you’re just some random girl and not Skylar Stover.”

Guys who weren’t famous always wanted to handle her like fragile material. They seemed to forget she lived with her fame every day. Of course she loathed the paparazzi, always being stared at, always hearing whispers when she bought groceries or coffee or maybe a book. Who wanted to be asked during dinner to take selfies and sign autographs? What actress was pleased to see her stricken face on the cover of Us Weekly and OK!? But in the end, all the attention seemed like a fair trade for the benefits afforded by celebrity. And if a drooling fan ever got too close, four years of cardio kickboxing might come in handy.

She assumed Thomas would have understood all this, since his first screenplay had put him on the map in Hollywood, but then again writers were a different breed than actors.

“Hey!” a man yelled over the growl of an engine, his voice colored by a deep drawl. “Nice car, boy!”

Thomas didn’t say anything she could hear.

“Where y’all headed? And what’s she doing down there?”

“Lost a contact lens,” Thomas yelled.

“Y’all need help?”

“Nah, we’re good!”

A few seconds passed, and Skylar expected to hear the pickup recede into the distance, but it didn’t. That’s when she realized why Thomas was being so cautious: Even though they were traveling on a highway in the middle of the city, without an obvious or even implied police presence, the two of them were on their own if there was trouble. She was also forced to concede that certain people would be more likely to harass them if they knew she was a famous actress.

“Ain’t this a trip?” the fellow in the pickup yelled. “Whole world’s fucked up!”

“You got that right,” Thomas replied.

“Well, good luck to ya. You got a runnin’ car. I’m sure we’ll see you around!”

“Maybe so,” Thomas yelled back.

Finally, the pickup seemed to pull away.

“Can I come up for air yet?”

* * *

By the time they left the turnpike, the pickup was long gone. Skylar hid behind sunglasses while Thomas steered them between stalled cars on surface streets. He didn’t bother to stop at intersections because none of the traffic lights were working, and anyway no one was coming. Since the truck, they hadn’t seen another working vehicle or any sign of electricity.

People were everywhere. They streamed on sidewalks and stood in parking lots and sat in their cars with the doors open, as if their engines would come back to life if they waited long enough. Skylar wondered what they were all thinking. How many people even knew what a pulse was?

That made her remember the suicidal husband. Had the pulse interrupted his plans? Would they ever know without going to check on him? How could they not check on him? Either to help Seth or the family he would leave behind?

She almost said something to Thomas about it, but the dark and determined look on his face convinced her to wait.

Eventually they arrived at an intersection that was completely blocked by stalled cars. A blue Chevy SUV had plowed into the back of a black Infiniti SUV, and several cars had swerved to dodge the accident. These evasive maneuvers had filled all available lanes and even some imaginary lanes. Thomas shifted the transmission into reverse, intending to bypass the intersection through an adjacent parking lot, and when he did, a nearby young woman and her daughter approached the car.

“Excuse me, sir,” said the woman. Her blonde hair was tied behind her head and Skylar could tell she had been crying. The little girl’s eyes looked vacant, as if she had opted out of reality.

“Yes, ma’am?” said Thomas, his smiled visibly strained.

“Why is your car running when others aren’t?”

Skylar noticed other pedestrians drifting toward them. In the distance, over the tops of buildings and trees, black smoke continued to roil into the sky. She tried not to look at the new star, but it was impossible to ignore.

“I’m not sure,” Thomas said. He put the transmission back into gear and began to roll forward. “At this point we’re just trying to get home.”

“Where are you headed? Can you give us a ride? I only live a few blocks that way.”

The woman was pointing in the direction Thomas had been headed. The desperate look on her face and the vacant look in the little girl’s eyes made Skylar want to reach out and hug both of them.

“Ma’am, I—”

Skylar grabbed his hand and raised her sunglasses.

“Thomas, please.”

He stared at her for a moment, considering his answer, and then turned back to the woman.

“Get in. Do it fast.”

Skylar opened the door and used a lever beneath the seat to scoot it forward. The woman lifted her daughter into the back and climbed in behind her.

Other people were approaching. Skylar fell into her seat and shut the door.

“Excuse me,” a woman cried out. “Excuse me! Can you take, me, too? Please?”

Thomas hit the accelerator and the car shot forward.

“Asshole!” the woman yelled.

“We can’t take everyone,” Thomas muttered.

“Thank you,” the woman said from the back seat. “Thank you so much.”

* * *

“It’s up on the right,” the woman said after they’d been driving for a moment. “We’re in Grayhawk on Bruschetta Drive. Do you know where that is?”

“No. Just tell me when to turn.”

The friendly and accommodating Thomas Skylar had met at the airport was noticeably absent since the pulse. But honestly she had no idea who Thomas was or what he was really like. Everything she knew about him she’d gleaned from the trades, from his scripts, from a feature in Entertainment Weekly. He’d become a Hollywood darling after the success of Thomas World, which was one of those cross-cultural juggernauts that pulled viewers from nearly every demographic. On its surface the film was science fiction, following a man whose life turns out to exist in a computer-simulated world of his own creation, but at heart it was a love story. And the film had come armed with a built-in marketing gimmick, because Thomas the protagonist was essentially the screenwriter Thomas. This blending of worlds caused fans of the movie to wonder just how much of its story was true, eventually spawning a subreddit dedicated to tracking down Sophia, the unrequited love from his college years, as well as his ex-wife, Gloria. After the divorce, Thomas had fallen into depression, only to rise from the ashes of his failed life by selling his story to a major Hollywood producer. And when his next project sold for twice that of the first, he became the industry’s hottest screenwriter.

Considering the struggles Thomas had overcome, she expected him to demonstrate a little more empathy for the less fortunate around them. Instead, the appearance of the new star had turned him surly and selfish.

“What’s your name, honey?” Skylar said, turning to face the little girl.

After a moment of eye contact, the girl wiped tears from her cheeks and turned away.

“Come on, darling,” said the mom. “It’s okay.”

“Hey,” Skylar said to her, “did you ever see the show ‘Jeffrey’s Special Friends’ on Nickelodeon?”

The girl was still ignoring her, or pretending to, but recognition flickered in her guarded eyes.

“Do you remember Milou? The girl who made friends with the tiny people in her dollhouse?”

Now the little girl looked up again. Skylar pushed her sunglasses back and smiled.

“So, do you recognize me?”

The girl flashed a brilliant smile.

“Oh my gosh! You’re Milou! What are you doing here?”

“Well, honey, I’m an actress. Milou is a character I used to play. I came to Dallas to talk to Thomas, this guy next to me. He writes movies.” Skylar had learned about Thomas’ new project three months earlier. By the time she called her agent, she’d already been placed on the short list of possible leads, and after some negotiation and two weeks of waiting became attached to the project. That was when she requested an in-person meeting with the screenwriter. It was an unusual request and she expected Thomas to understand this.

For a short while, after her first breakout film, Skylar had relished the luxury of being universally desired, and this had led her to date a variety of actors. Intellectually she was drawn to gaunt men who didn’t shave much and who looked for projects outside the Hollywood bubble. With these guys she never wanted for attention or intellectual stimulation, but there was a hollowness to her attraction for them, a missing sense of security and sexual satiety that she fulfilled by dating another kind of man—less thoughtful, more clean-shaven, perfectly-groomed stars of thrillers and action-oriented pictures who considered the term “art film” an oxymoron. And when she finally found someone who embodied both archetypes, she impulse-married him after two months of dating. Skylar and Roark had been mocked by celebrity magazines and cable entertainment programs and late-night talk show hosts (Us Weekly had bestowed them with the portmanteau “Skylark”) but she hadn’t minded because she knew exactly what she was doing. She was a twenty-seven-year-old woman sitting on $75 million in career earnings. Her life bore no resemblance to reality the way most humans understood it, and this made her feel obligated to behave in absurd ways. Like run off to Milan where she married Roark in a ten-minute ceremony. Like celebrating their nuptials with ring finger tattoos followed by cinematic sex in a dark alley amidst the pouring rain. It was no surprise the marriage survived only two years, but Skylar was caught off guard by how depressed she’d been over the divorce. Which was why, when news of The Pulse had come along (just three months after Roark retrieved the last of his things from the house in Beverly Hills) she jumped at the chance to star in the film.

Skylar had flown to Dallas to discover which qualities the real Thomas shared with Thomas the screenwriter. Thomas the screenwriter adored women, and he believed in the power of romantic love even in a social media world where relationships were often untraditional. But now her plan was pointless. Now, the world felt like it was ending and her reason for coming here seemed ridiculous.

Except it was also the only reason she was alive.

“You’re Skylar Stover,” the girl’s mother said in a small voice. “My name is Chanda. I’m sorry I didn’t recognize you before. I was so freaked out about the car and having to walk home that I didn’t really look at you.”

Skylar smiled awkwardly. She looked at the little girl again.

“I still don’t know your name.”

“It’s Amanda. Well, Louise if you include my middle name.”

“Pleased to meet you, Amanda Louise. I’m Skylar Inez.”

“Inez is your middle name?”

“Yes, ma’am. I have one just like you.”

When Amanda smiled again, Skylar’s heart ached. What would happen to this girl and her mom after Thomas dropped them off?

“Where should I turn?” he asked.

“Up here on Grayhawk. Make a right and a right and then a left. I’ll show you.”

Amanda was still smiling broadly and sneaking furtive glances at Skylar, but Chanda looked like she might throw up.

“So what are we supposed to do? I mean when we get home? What are y’all going to do?”

“I just flew in from New York,” Skylar said. “I landed twenty minutes before this happened. We barely got out of the airport.”

“I can’t believe it,” Chanda said. “I was in my car when it stopped working. Just stopped. I thought it was something with the alternator again, ‘cause I only had that worked on three weeks ago. But then I looked around and saw all the cars were stopped. Pretty soon people were getting out and walking around, looking confused, and that’s when we saw the light in the sky. We all knew it came from that, but no one knew what it was. Some guy said aliens. He said a spaceship could look just like that, a point of light, and maybe they’re launching an attack, killing all our cars and power so we can’t fight back.”

“I don’t think it’s a spaceship,” Thomas said. “But it might be a star that exploded. I’ve never seen one before, but I think that’s what it would look like. And no matter what it is, it’s going to be a big problem if the power doesn’t come back on soon. Which street do I turn on?”

“Right here on Swan Lake. Then your second left. Now just a few houses up. Yeah, right there. This is it.”

“Great,” Thomas said. “Let’s get you going.”

He stepped out of the car and helped the woman and her daughter onto the sidewalk.

“Thank you so much,” Chanda said. “I can’t thank you two enough.”

“We were happy to give you a ride,” Skylar told her.

Thomas took Chanda by the shoulder and pulled her aside. He spoke in a quiet voice.

“I want you to know it’s possible the power might not come back for a while, and you should prepare in case it doesn’t. Go to the grocery store right away and buy whatever food you can, like rice and beans and stuff that will last a while. Beef jerky. Canned vegetables. You realize if cars and trucks don’t work, it means no more deliveries to grocery stores. Without those deliveries, the city will run out of food very quickly.”

“You’re scaring me.”

“And before you leave for the store, fill your tubs and sinks and all your bowls with water. Without electricity the pressure will die in a couple of days and your faucets will stop working.”

“Are you joking? How do you know this?”

“Do you have a bicycle?”

“My daughter does. I think mine works but the chain needs oil.”

“When you go to the store, buy oil for the chain. Do you have cash?”

“Why do you act like this is the end of the world? Why don’t you think the power will come back?”

“Maybe I’m wrong,” Thomas said to her. “But what would you do if the power didn’t come back on for a month? A year?”

“Oh, my God,” Chanda said. She reached instinctively for her daughter and Skylar could see she was near tears again. “You don’t honestly think that could happen?”

“There’s no way to know for sure, but it’s better to be safe. How much cash do you have?”

“I don’t know. Like ten bucks?”

Thomas reached into his pocket and retrieved a money clip. He peeled off two hundred-dollar bills and handed them to her.

“Use this to help. But don’t hoard it. Spend it all today. When people figure out the power isn’t coming back on, they’ll stop accepting cash. They’ll want something else, like to trade.”

“How do you know all this? Who are you?”

“Just a guy who writes movies, honest. But I’ve also done a lot of research about something called an electromagnetic pulse. It can come from a solar flare or a nuclear weapon or even a supernova, and it can knock out the power and kill every electronic device. If that’s what this is, things will become very different. Do you have a gun?”

Chanda looked at him for a long moment without answering.

“I think you’re overreacting. This isn’t a third world country.”

Thomas glanced at Amanda, then back at her mother.

“Maybe not. But that could change really fast. Stock up on food and water, just in case.”

Chanda looked both frightened and defiant, and Skylar wondered what she would do in the mother’s shoes. Without context, the things Thomas had said seemed outlandish. But Skylar had read his script, and she couldn’t see any reason why the real world would fare better after an EMP than his fictional one.

“Thanks for the ride,” Chanda finally said. “I’ll think about what you told me. But I hope to God you’re wrong. Honestly, I hope you’re full of shit.”

* * *

Once their passengers were gone, Skylar had nothing to do but look around, and all she saw was dread. Hordes of people were crowded on sidewalks, clustered in groups, looking at the new star, looking toward the airport, streaming into and out of convenience stores and banks and churches. Others were on bicycles, and she even spotted two off-road motorbikes. But almost everyone she saw, no matter who they were or what they were doing, stared lustily at Thomas’ Mustang. And to Skylar it seemed like a feral sort of envy.

Again she thought of her mother and father in New York. They’d both grown up poor and knew the meaning of hardship, but today they lived in an expensive apartment on the Upper West Side. Her father worked in the Empire State Building, on the 53rd floor, and her mother’s office was a short walk from their apartment. Both would have been at work when the new star appeared, but what were they doing now? With no elevator, on bum knees, how would her father ever make it to the street?

Her brother, Sean, lived in Echo Park, and he was one of the smartest men Skylar knew. But there were twenty million people in southern California, and the only agriculture Skylar had ever seen near the city were vineyards and fruit orchards. What were twenty million people going to eat when there were no trucks to bring them food?

What about Sallie and Jessie, her two precious Chihuahuas?

Even though she was a girl and couldn’t always help it, Skylar took great pride in not crying in front of other people. Especially men. So she looked away from Thomas, toward the street, and through her tears saw a woman pushing a stroller. The woman’s face was stricken white. Skylar made eye contact with her and then quickly looked away, into the side mirror. She saw movement in the side mirror. It was a policeman waving his arms.

When she leaned closer, hoping to get a better look, she finally realized the officer was waving at them.

“Thomas, there’s a—”

“Cop, I know. We’re not stopping. Don’t turn around.”

“What? Why?”

“Because he probably wants my car and I’m not giving it to him.”

“But he’s a police officer, for heaven’s sake. Maybe—”

Thomas had slowed to navigate an intersection choked with stalled cars, but now he was through it and accelerating again.

“You want to risk it? You want to walk two more miles to my house?”

Skylar thought again of her family, stranded, and shut her mouth.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “If this really is a pulse, no one will be able to help us if something goes wrong. There are seven million people in this city. For the police, having one working car would be like shooting a rifle at a spaceship. It’s not going to make a difference. But for you and me, it makes all the difference in the world.”

“You really think no one is coming? You really think the government doesn’t have a plan for this? I just can’t believe today of all days is the end of the world.”

“Until we know for sure, we should proceed like we’re on our own. Don’t you think?”

“I’m worried about my family,” Skylar said, and gave in to the tears. “Especially my parents. They live in Manhattan. What are they going to do?”

Thomas reached over and lightly squeezed her shoulder.

“I’m sure they’re okay. At least right now they are. And maybe you’re right. Maybe the government is already on its way to fix all this.”

It annoyed her that Thomas wouldn’t address the improbable nature of what was happening. Not just this awful disaster, but specifically how similar it was to the screenplay he’d written. The Pulse, after all, was the story of a global catastrophe ignited by the same kind of technology-melting apocalypse the new star had induced. Thomas had written about planes falling out of the sky, about fires that swept across cities, about people caught in unfortunate places like elevators and Swiss gondolas that were trapped halfway between the ground and their distant destinations. That Skylar had flown here to discuss an apocalyptic story which was now in the process of unfolding was inconceivable. It was frightening. And Thomas hadn’t said a word about it.

Eventually they left the crowds of wandering people behind and crossed a lake on a four-lane bridge. After another stretch of mostly empty road, they turned onto a narrow and lonely-looking street that wandered into Thomas’ neighborhood. From there it was a short drive to his house, a large, French country home that stood on the shore of the lake and looked like it had been built yesterday.

Thomas unloaded her luggage and carried it toward the house. Inside she found European sofas that sat near the ground, a mixture of dark and light woods, enormous plate glass windows that opened to a grand view of the lake. As if any of it mattered.

“It’s great that we’re here now, but I’m still scared to death. I’m afraid I’m never going to see my family again.”

He reached for her then, and Skylar let herself be held. She barely knew this man, but she also understood they were in this together. She was overwhelmed, near panic, and somehow Thomas seemed so unflappable about it all.

“I hope you’re wrong,” Skylar confessed. “Just like that woman said. I hope you’re full of shit. Because in your screenplay almost everyone dies.”

Thomas let go of her and put his hands on her shoulders.

“Listen to me. I don’t know what’s going to happen. No one does. But we have a better chance than most.”

“Why is that? Because of your car?”

“Not just that. Let me show you something.”

Thomas led her deeper into the house until they were standing in front of a sturdy steel door. He retrieved a key from his pocket and inserted it into the dead bolt lock.

“This is a safe room. The walls are eight inches of reinforced concrete. It’s built to withstand an EF-5 tornado and even a catastrophic fire. Hence the name.”

Thomas threw the door open. With no windows, the room was dark, but he grabbed a couple of flashlights and handed one to her. He switched his on and waited for her to do the same.

What she saw took her breath away. Shelves had been mounted, from floor to ceiling, along all four walls. The room was as large as a typical bedroom.

Food covered every available surface. Rice and beans and cereal and oatmeal. Dried milk and jars of pickles and mayonnaise. Industrial sized cans of vegetables. Canned meats and sauces. Gallon jugs of water were stacked in crates, along with hundreds of individual bottles. Cases of beer and liquor covered an entire corner. Flour and sugar and spices and salts. Packages of corn chips and potato chips and an entire platoon of nuts— cashews, peanuts, mixed nuts, Spanish nuts, pecans, almonds, pistachios.

“Good lord, Thomas. This is so much food.”

“After I wrote that film,” he said, “after researching the ways to prepare for an EMP, I decided to build this room. Primarily to amuse myself. I never imagined I would have to use it.”

She knew he wanted her to be impressed with his astonishing provisions, and of course she was. But seeing such careful preparation also made her feel uncomfortable. Conspiratorial. It seemed impossible that anyone could know about an EMP before it happened, but a part of her still wondered if he had.

“It’s kind of you to share your food with me. But I can’t stop thinking about how similar all this is to your screenplay. That’s why I came here, to talk about The Pulse, and then a fucking pulse happens right after I land. That doesn’t seem a little strange to you?”

“It’s an incredible coincidence,” he said. “But so what? How does it change anything?”

Skylar didn’t know. But she also didn’t see how it could be an accident. In Thomas World, the entire story had taken place inside a simulated world created by the eponymous protagonist, and the success of this film had furnished real-life Thomas with the kind of money and fame few screenwriters ever achieved. Wired even published a story about the topic called Art Creates Life: How Thomas Phillips transformed fantasy into reality, in which the author postulated how the film’s success—and the ripple effects created by that success, including the author’s own Wired story— were all part of a larger, artificial reality designed by some extra-dimensional Thomas. Even late-night comedians pounced on the idea, like Trevor Noah, who on “The Daily Show” quipped, Hey Thomas, if this world is yours, that means Donald Trump is your fault. Thanks a lot, asshole!

“Maybe it’s not even happening,” she said. “Just like in your first film.”

“Maybe it isn’t. But what then? We just sit around and wait for the game to end?”

Skylar stared at him. She picked at her cuticles.

“If you saw the film,” Thomas said, “you know it doesn’t matter if any of this is real. The only thing that matters is what we do with the reality we’re faced with.”

“Like just sit here and eat peanut butter and wait for everyone else to die?”

“If you want to live, I don’t see what other choice we have.”

“That’s not good enough,” she replied. “We have to share your food. We have to help other people. We have to do something.”

“If anyone else around here finds out about my safe room,” said Thomas, “they will march over here with guns and take it from us. We won’t be able to stop them. There will be too many.”

Skylar remembered the starving mob in his screenplay and knew Thomas was right. If they were going to help someone, it had to be on the sly. And a limited number of people.

“I think we should check on Seth,” she finally said. “You promised him you would.”

“Skylar—”

“I know you don’t want to leave this fortress of solitude. But if Seth is dead, we really should help the wife and kids.”

“That’s a nice idea,” Thomas agreed. “Except Natalie and her family don’t live around here.”

“Where do they live?”

“In Tulsa.”

“Like Oklahoma?”

“Which is four hours away. At least it was.”

“Holy shit,” Skylar said. “I didn’t expect that.”

“I know I made a promise, but that was before all this. That was basically about money. Now, trying to save their lives could mean losing our own.”

“So all you want to do is hunker down? Live off your rations until everyone dies and then repopulate the world?”

“I didn’t say that. But it’s a long drive into empty countryside where anything might happen. We might not make it there. We might not make it back.”

“Maybe not,” she said in a quiet voice. “But what’s the point of surviving all this if survival is the only point?”