Under a Broken Sun by Kevin P. Sheridan Read Free Book Online

started to raise it.
    “Wait a minute,” Marilyn said grabbing my arm.  “What the hell are you doing?”
    “What, afraid we’ll trigger the alarm?”
    “What if the power comes back on?”
    “Trust me.  We’ve seen the last of ‘The Power’ for a long time.”  I hurled the cinder block through the glass door exploding it inward.  A part of me shrunk back in fear of the loud noise that should've followed.
    But there was nothing.  I climbed through the broken glass door and into the shadowy store, lit only by the sun rising outside.  The two girls followed behind.  I could barely make out the products, but I knew where I needed to go: the pharmacy.
    I grabbed a duffle bag from the seasonal section.  “Summer Fun!” a sign announced.  The bag had some dipshit cartoon character smiling and waving with the writing “Life is Good” underneath it.  The fuck it is.
    I zipped it open, and went to the sun-bloc aisle.  Scooped up an armful of whatever was there and dumped it in the bag.  Wouldn’t stop the radiation, but it was on my dad’s list, and that was good enough for me.
    Next was water.  I heard shuffling in the candy / food aisle, and then the girls ripping open boxes.  I dropped bottles of water into the bag, weighing it down.  But what choice did I have?
    I set the bag down, grabbed another, and went to the front.  I had to make sure when I grabbed pills from the pharmacy; we only had one chance to get it right.  I had to be able to see.  I went around the counter and grabbed two fistfuls of lighters and a pocket flashlight.  I turned the flashlight on but nothing.  I checked, and saw batteries in the compartment.  Why wouldn’t batteries work?
    This wasn’t just an EMP.  This was something Dad didn’t anticipate.  He used to talk about solar flares and EMPs, and he said most electronics would still be functioning – more than people think.  Electricity, he said, would be interrupted, but not altered.  Electrons would still flow.  I tried another flashlight.  Nothing.  Then another.  “Fuck,” I said, flinging them to the ground.  I noticed the rack of magnets near the cash register had a pile of magnets counter.  I raised one and put it to the metal.  It fell right off.  Nothing. 
    My mind created a whole new shit list that I really didn't want to deal with.  Magnetics.  Magnetosphere.  The poles.  Something had seriously fucked up the Earth.  But what?  How?
    Didn't matter.  Fire just became the highest priority.  I grabbed a newspaper, the President’s smiling face on the cover waving.  Sucks to be him right now, I thought.
    Sucks to be all of us.
    I rolled up the newspaper and lit it, then carried it back to the Pharmacy.  No need to worry about sprinkler systems or alarms.
    In the pharmacy I scanned the shelves and found a box full of little pills.  I checked my dad’s list: Amoxicillin.  The names matched.  Penicillin.  Definitely a requirement.  "You girls on any meds?" I asked. 
    "No," they replied.
    "No bullshit, guys.  This is our only chance.  If you’re on meds and don't take them-"
    "Zoloft," Marilyn replied.
    "Birth control pills," Ashley shouted out.  That threw me.  She couldn't have been more than sixteen.  "For my periods, before you start thinking anything fucked up," she called back.
    I grabbed a huge bottle of Zoloft, and a box of what I hoped was birth control pills.  And a smaller bottle of oxycodon.  The good stuff.  Just in case.
    I stuffed a few tubes of antibiotic creams into the weighty duffle bag and zipped the bag up.
    I nearly dropped it when I heard Ashley scream.
     

6.    
     
    I’ve never stepped on a human hand before, especially when it belongs to a dead guy.  But as I turned down an aisle to see what the hell Ashley was going on about, I saw her looking down at the floor near my feet, and that’s when I stepped forward, onto a hand. 
    Instinct shot me backwards and an apology almost escaped, but