I was working the graveyard shift at the Quonset gas station the night of the first flare. I thought it was a normal aurora. I had seen many of them before. The sky lit up in greens and purples. It was very pretty, but never anything more than that. That night, though ... that night everything changed.

I was hanging out behind the counter, but not much product was left on the shelves. The whole community had already left. Winter was usually quiet, but now, since the economy collapsed, there was no money anywhere. People moved away in droves, and shipments of products stopped coming in from the mainland. We were nearly out of gas in the tanks and almost no food in the convenience store.

I was listening to the radio. It said that a massive stormfront was heading our way and would hit in fourteen days. A blizzard that could freeze us solid for weeks and maybe till spring. Right then, a young lady came in from trying to fill up her car. She only had half a tank in her car before the big tanks went dry. She swore, paid for what she got in cash, and left. She must not have been from around the island as no one still here had cash once the economy collapsed. Now, there are very few left here at all.

A short while later, the ground started shaking, and everything went dark. The station, the streetlights, and all the empty houses along the coast were all blacked out. That was when I first saw that aurora borealis in the sky. I didn’t think much of it at the time. They happen frequently, but this one actually felt strange.

The island had become prone to quakes in the past decade. After years of instability, the fragile economy collapsed due to crumbling infrastructure and industry. When the mine closed, that was the end of most of the jobs. The only large employer left was the prison, and no one wanted to work out there. Most people moved away. Others started a protectionist movement to keep the island for islanders, damaging the tourism industry. All that was left was forestry, and those damned activist attacks ruined that.

I tried all the flashlights I had, and none of them worked. Neither did my phone nor the landline at the station. I decided to grab an old oil barrel, cut the top off with a hacksaw, and use it as a fire barrel. The venting in the station should keep the fumes and smoke down as long as I don’t get too crazy with wood. Lately, I had already been sleeping here, I set up a bed when the place I was renting kicked me out. The owner didn’t really care. He thought it was a good idea. Someone would always be there to keep an eye on it. Easy for him to say, he lived on the mainland.

I started a fire using some pallets I had broken down with a heavy hammer. Luckily, we had a few packs of matches left in the store. It didn’t take long for the light and warmth of the fire to spread across the station. I wasn’t sure what my plan would be for food. I didn’t have much left here. Even if I ate the remaining product, unless rescue came within seven days, I’d be stuck in the blizzard with no food. I would have to go out and scavenge whatever I could find from the area.

I figured I would go out early when the sun came out. There was no point in stumbling around in the dark with no flashlight. The aurora provided some light, but it was cold, and I had enough wood to make it through the night tonight anyway. As I was throwing more wood on the fire, I heard a loud banging sound on the front door of the station. I wasn’t sure if it was wind or not till it happened again. It sounded like someone pounding on the door. Now, I didn’t have any real weapons in the station, so I grabbed the heavy hammer and went to the door.

“Hello?” I yelled, but I didn’t hear a response. “Is somebody out there?”

“Please help me,” I heard faintly on the other side of the door.

As I opened the door, I held the hammer up ready to strike, in case it was a trick. A figure fell onto the floor, bleeding and frozen. It was the woman from earlier. She looked like she was in rough shape. I picked her up and brought her over to the fire to warm her up and check her for injuries.

“What happened? Who are you?” I asked, but it was clear she had fallen unconscious.

I checked her quickly to see if I saw any external wounds. She had a large cut on her head and looked like a bloody nose. I didn’t see any other injuries on her arms or legs. I removed most of her blood covered clothes to check the rest of her but left on her underwear for her own modesty. When I was fairly certain she wasn’t going to die that night, I picked her up, placed her on the bed, and covered her in blankets to keep her warm.

It was late, but I was unsure what to do with this injured girl. I had a spare bedroll that I had used before I brought in the bed, so I laid that on the floor. I guess I’ll be sleeping down here tonight, I thought to myself. I checked the fire, making sure there would be enough wood to keep it burning, or at least smoldering, until morning. I undressed and crawled inside, trying to get some sleep.

“Where the hell am I? Where are my clothes? HELP! HELP!” I was being rudely awakened by the screaming coming from the woman in my bed.

“Calm down, calm down,” I said. “You’re in the Quonset gas station and garage along the coast. I found you banging on the door last night. You were bleeding and nearly frozen to death. Your clothes are under the bed.”

“Why am I not wearing them? What did you do to me?”

“You came in injured and then fell unconscious, I had to make sure you didn’t have other serious injuries. You’re welcome, by the way.”

“I ... what? Oh, I remember leaving this place, then my car stopped working. I don’t remember much after that,” she said, calming down.

“What’s your name? I’m Rob, I work here.”

“Kelly. Kelly Anderson. I’m a research assistant with Dr. Lang. Oh, my head.”

“Yeah, you had a cut on your head, and you may have a concussion, but I don’t really know. You collapsed as I opened the door. I have some painkillers here if you want. Your doctor friend, was he in the car with you?”

She reached out and took a couple of the pills, and I handed her a bottle of water to wash them down before she continued’ “No, he left by plane. I hate flying, so I had a boat waiting near the point lighthouse. There’s an old dock near there.”

“If you want to change, here’s a T-shirt to wear. Your shirt and coat are a bloody mess, and I don’t have a way to clean them. There’s a washroom around the corner.”

“Thanks, Rob,” she said as she covered herself with the blankets and darted to the washroom with her clothes in hand. I got dressed and checked on the fire. It was at a low sizzle, so I threw on a couple of pamphlets and a few sticks to get it going again. A few minutes later, she asked, “Hey Rob, the water’s not working.”

“Yeah, I know. There’s no power to pump from the well. There seems to be no electricity anywhere right now.”

She came out of the washroom, changed into some clothes, and stood by the fire barrel, warming her hands. “No electricity? Like anywhere? I wonder if that strange electromagnetic storm and aurora caused it.”

“Beats me, I just know that everything in here is fried. Even stuff with batteries. It’s all dead.”

“Strange. Sounds just like what happened to my car. I was just driving along, and suddenly everything shut off. The power steering failed, and I ended up hitting a tree, I think.”

“Well, now that you’re awake and apparently not dying, I’m going to go out and see if I can find any supplies or food before the storm hits.”

“Storm? What storm?” She sounded nervous.

“There was a warning last night of a giant winter storm, and then everything went dark. It’s supposed to hit in fourteen days, a real doozy. If we can’t find help to get us out of here, I want to make sure I have supplies, like food, wood, and tools, to last through the storm. I can also check for your car, if you want.”

“I should come too. I can help and show you where my car went off the road.”

“Are you sure? Your jacket got pretty messed up and covered in blood.”

She said it would be fine, so we ate some of the food still here, packed up a backpack with water and a crowbar, and headed out the door into the cold Canadian winter.

As we stepped outside, you could tell it was still early in the morning. The sun was low on the horizon, and the air was very cold. We wouldn’t want to stay out in the open like this for long. We walked along the highway, away from the little village of cottages by the station. A lot of them have fallen into disrepair over the years while others have regular visitors during the summer months.

We must have walked for a good twenty minutes when we came across her car. It had run off the road shortly before a roadblock from the quake that fell across the highway. She was lucky to be alive, and I was impressed she managed to make it back to the station on foot last night, based on her condition.

We checked the car, and it didn’t start, much like everything else around here. There also wasn’t much to scavenge from it. She took a bag of clothes, a stack of papers, and a granola bar. We started walking back. As we passed some abandoned cabins. I decided this might be a good place to start looking for stuff, so I pulled out the crowbar and walked to the door.

“What are you doing, Rob?” she asked. “You can’t just break into houses.”

“No one lives here. The bank repossessed these cottages a few months ago. There might be some food or clothes inside, and we will need that stuff if we aren’t rescued. As I always say, it’s better to ask forgiveness than wait for permission,” I said with a laugh as I pried open the door.

“You can tell that joke to the cops when they show up and arrest you for looting,” Kelly said sternly.

“Hey, if the cops show up, we’ll be saved. I’ll consider that a win-win. And I prefer the term foraging, not looting.”

“I can’t believe I’m stuck here with you but ... let’s go.”

We both went in to see if there was anything useful inside. There wasn’t much, a cooking pot, skillet, a few small bags of ketchup chips, and a hunting knife. Nothing very substantive, but it was only the first place we looked. There were several small cabins around the highway here, and a couple nice cottages out on the frozen water. If I could find some fishing tackle, I could catch some fish in some of the empty fishing huts scattered around on the ice. I could clean the fish, then put it in a sealed container outside so it would last longer.

We checked the other couple of cottages around that area. We did find a sweater and ski jacket, but the big find was a bow and ten arrows. These would come in handy if I could find some deer, or with some luck, a moose. That would give us quite a bit of food for a while, if we could find one, that is.

On our way back to the gas station, I heard some wolves howling somewhere out on the ice. That wasn’t uncommon for this time of year, but with very few other people around, I didn’t want a close view of the furry creatures. We hastened our step and made our way back to drop off our newfound gear.

With the unwelcome wildlife hanging about today, I decided it might be best to hunker down for the rest of the day. Maybe, it would be a good time to take stock of the supplies and what we might need to survive for the next few months, provided no one came to rescue us. With things being as they were, we didn’t have the luxury of hoping for the best, we had to plan for the worst. It was easier when it was just me, but now there’s a second mouth to feed, even though it was a pretty one.

I got the fire going again and threw some wood on so the room would heat up. I put a cooking grate over the barrel and started melting some snow in one of the cooking pots for future water. In another pot, I emptied a can of tomato soup.

“So now that we are stuck together, what is it you do?” I asked Kelly.

She just finished hanging up her coat in a locker and sat down in an old office chair. “I’m a research assistant of Dr. Lang. I studied neuroscience and psychology.”

“Wow, ok so you are smarter than me. What were you and the doctor doing out here on this desolate island? The place is nearly abandoned at this point, not a lot of need for your skillset here.”

She looked down, as if contemplating an answer, “I’m not supposed to say but we were looking for a colleague of Dr. Lang. Someone who went missing here decades ago before the mine closed; a Dr. Rudiger.”

“That’s strange, why would he be looking for someone like that and bring you along?”

“It had something to do with Dr. Rudiger’s research. If we found his notes, Dr. Lang hoped I could understand what he was trying to do. I don’t know, it was very hush hush. I was only told after I got here and signed an NDA.”

“Then why are you telling me?” I asked.

“Look at the situation we’re in. We have more important things to worry about.”

I nodded my head, “That’s true, so then I should ask, what skills do you have that might help us out here? Any survival training, cooking, sewing, or crafting skills?”

She paused to think, “I can cook some, but we’d need more supplies. I know how to sew, and clean fish but that’s all I can think of at the moment that might be useful.”

“Well, those are good to have. Just don’t psychoanalyze me. I don’t want you running off into the cold,” I laughed. She just looked at me. “Anyway, I can hunt, fish, and gather stuff. I do have some survival skills like carcass harvesting for food and some small first aid stuff.”

“Ok, I think we have most of the basics covered. What do you think we might need to survive for the next couple of months, if help doesn’t come?” she asked.

I replied that we could use more food, both canned provisions and other things we could store. I suggested that I could run a safety rope from the garage out to the closest ice fishing hut so I could find my way there in a storm. I know they all have some kind of stove or heater inside, so grabbing some fuel and stocking one of them up would help with fresh fish. We’ll need more wood for the fire barrel, boiled water, matches if we could find them, and maybe if we are lucky, a rifle and some ammo for hunting. We already got lucky with the bow, but having something with a bit more punch never hurts, especially with the bears, wolves, and moose that hang around the area. Other helpful supplies would include a lantern and fuel, a hatchet, and maybe some warmer clothes.

Kelly took a piece of paper out of a desk drawer and made a rough list of all the supplies we needed and added checkboxes for when we completed each task. It was nice to have someone so organized, cause I wasn’t one to write out a list. As uptight as she could be at times, it was actually nice to have some company during this crazy ordeal.

I mean, I’m usually not into smart girls. Maybe that’s because they’re smart enough to stay away from me. Kelly though, well, she did have a sexy librarian thing going on when her light brown hair was pulled back. Despite the cut on her head from the crash, she had a cute face and nice eyes. I shook myself from my fantasies when she noticed me looking at her, so I went back to the list.

I was hungry as the night closed in and darkness filled the garage once again. I knew there wasn’t much food left for both of us for the next day. I guess we’d have to get used to eating less than normal for the foreseeable future. I put some more wood on the fire to keep us warm throughout the night and we prepared to go to sleep. I let Kelly take the cot once again, while I pulled up some blankets on the floor, near the fire barrel.

“Thank you for saving me, Rob,” I heard softly from the cot.

“Anytime Kelly. We are in this together now. Sleep well, we have a lot of work ahead of us.”

With that, I put my head down and tried to drift off to sleep, but all I could think about was the circumstances we were in. Younger me would have dreamed of this scenario, snowed in with a beautiful woman, but the reality was a little different. This was real life, and the weather was getting colder, the snow deeper, and food scarcer. The snow was coming, and we needed to get ready quickly.

The next few days were a blur of getting immediate supplies to help us survive in the short term. I found a couple long lengths of rope and fashioned a guide system to the closest fishing hut. I gathered some sticks, wood, and tinder and placed it inside the hut to fuel a day’s fishing session to catch some food for the next few days. I brought back the catch, a couple of medium sized whitefish, and Kelly cleaned and prepared it for dinner. There was an extra one which she cleaned and placed it outside in a metal box to keep the animals out of it. Hopefully, it stays cold enough to be good for a few more days.

We did some exploring of a couple of the cottages close by the small townsite around the garage. We brought back some canned food, drinks, snacks, and a few other staples, like salt and oil, that would help us with cooking. I kept the garage stocked with wood and sticks for the fire. I would chop up some downed limbs around the ground and drag them back to the garage on a sled I found, and Kelly would stack it in the car maintenance area.

The wolves were still around. We could hear them howling all the time, but they hadn’t made an appearance by our home base yet. Tracks indicated they were sniffing around at night but seemed to take off before dawn. More worrying were the signs of a bear roaming about, but he too was absent during the day. We’d have to keep our eyes and ears open to not cross his path. Outside of the predators, a few deer tracks could be found near the ice. Moose rubbings were found a short way from the garage too, which would give us plenty of food but taking one down would be a challenge. Seems like there were lots of walking meals around, we just needed to have it delivered.

We were working really well together as a team, our relationship thawing a bit from the frosty first meeting. We were both opening up a bit more about our pasts, our goals, and our feelings about what we were truly up against in the current situation. She was as nervous as I was about the oncoming storm. As the days passed, the power and phone lines stayed down, it was becoming more and more obvious that we were here to stay. We had no one else to rely on but each other.

The nights were cold and seemed to be getting colder, but it was difficult to truly tell without a thermometer. We kept the fire going throughout the night as I had done since the lights went out. I was still sleeping on the floor but found an old bedroll in one of the houses. I took some extra blankets as well from a cottage to keep us both warm at night.

One day, while trying to scavenge supplies from some cottages that were on a couple of islands out in the bay, we stayed out later than we planned. The cottage was rife with great gear and supplies, since I believe the owners were from the mainland. We actually found a lantern and fuel, a rifle and some ammo, and a decent amount of canned food. By the time we were ready to leave, the sun had gone down, and it was dark. We had used the lantern to loot the remainder of the residence and were about to leave when the lights started to flicker.

At first, we thought the power had come back. A crew had fixed whatever line was down and soon a rescue crew would be on its way. We stepped outside into the night air to find that strange aurora was back. It lit up the sky in greens, purples, and whites that would lead us back to our temporary garage home.

We were 500 meters from the shore, when the first wolf appeared from the shadows. Its eyes glowed from the lights in the sky. The beast howled. It was a strange sound, distorted and electric. It was like nothing I’d ever heard before. The call was answered by a chorus of several other howls in short order. Soon there were 3 more wolves between us and our home. We were laden with supplies, our backs sore and heavy, so we slowly backed away from the predators. We tried to maintain distance between us and them as they walked onto the ice. As they all stood in the open, there was a weird reflection of the aurora on their fur, shining and radiating dimly. Something told me they were more dangerous than even the normal wolves, so I got between Kelly and them and walked faster.

The wolves kept pace but luckily didn’t charge at us. We backed our way to the island we had just come from, climbed the bank and headed for the door. One wolf snarled, barked, and ran at us as we opened the door. I pushed Kelly inside, hopped in, and slammed the door in the wolf’s face. A loud thud, then growling and scratching could be heard on the other side. We were lucky it was a heavy wooden door. I helped Kelly up as we stood in the flickering lights of the cottage.

“What the hell was that? Why were those wolves glowing?” she asked, dropping her bag on the floor.

“I don’t know, but I think we’re staying here tonight. I don’t want to go out there until they go away,” I replied, as I dumped my heavy load on the floor.

“Agreed, but there’s no fireplace here. What are we going to do for food, or to keep warm for that matter?

“Food, well we have some of the stuff we found today. I think there’s some Zak’s Snax in one of our bags. There were a few Summit sodas too. As for warmth, I don’t know. It’s warmer in here than outside, and even if we had a fireplace or woodstove, we have no wood.”

“At least we have some light from these weird, flickering lights. Do you think the power is restored?” Kelly asked as she started digging through her pack for food.