The Road North

Reynolds discovered that two hundred miles through collapsed America was farther than the distance to orbit.

The convoy to Peterson Air Force Base consisted of three Humvees and two supply trucks, carrying diesel, medical supplies, and ammunition—the new holy trinity of survival. Reynolds rode in the lead vehicle with Sergeant Kowalski, a combat veteran who’d seen Baghdad at its worst and said Denver was getting close.

“Stay alert through Albuquerque,” Kowalski advised as they rolled out of White Sands at dawn. “City’s divided between military control zones and gang territory. We’ve got safe passage agreements, but agreements don’t mean much anymore.”

Reynolds watched the desert scroll past, beautiful in its emptiness. Out here, you could almost pretend the cascade hadn’t happened. The mountains still stood. The sun still rose. Only the absence of contrails in the crystal blue sky hinted at the catastrophe.

“How bad is Colorado Springs?” Reynolds asked.

“Better than most. Air Force Academy’s turned into a fortress community. Peterson’s holding. Fort Carson’s secure. But the civilian areas…” Kowalski shrugged. “FEMA camps if you’re lucky. Refugee flows heading east, looking for food. Local militias controlling resources. It’s a mess, sir.”

They reached Albuquerque’s outskirts by midmorning. The city sprawled below them, a patchwork of dark zones and islands of generator-powered light. Smoke columns marked recent fighting or uncontrolled fires—hard to tell which from distance.

“Convoy, this is Lead. Safe corridor is I-40 to I-25 north. No stops, no deviations. Weapons ready but not visible. We’re guests here, not occupiers.”

They descended into the city, and Reynolds got his first real look at urban collapse. Cars abandoned where they’d died when navigation failed. Storefronts smashed and looted. Bodies that no one had bothered to move, bloating in the high desert sun.

But also signs of adaptation. Street markets operating by barter. Hand-painted signs directing refugees to water stations. Groups of civilians working together to clear roads, plant gardens, create some semblance of order from chaos.

“Checkpoint ahead,” Kowalski announced. “Everybody stay cool.”

The checkpoint was professional—concrete barriers, armed guards, military efficiency. But the soldiers manning it weren’t U.S. military. The flag flying overhead was Chinese.

“The hell?” Reynolds’ driver muttered.

“New agreement,” Kowalski explained quietly. “Chinese forces are providing security and engineering support in exchange for administrative authority. Started three days ago.”

Reynolds felt his jaw tighten. The same nation that had triggered the cascade was now positioning itself as savior. And desperate people were accepting the bargain.

The checkpoint guards waved them through after checking papers. Reynolds noticed Chinese military vehicles patrolling side streets, PLA engineers working on what looked like a solar panel array. Efficient. Organized. Filling the vacuum left by America’s paralyzed government.

“How many cities have made similar deals?” Reynolds asked.

“West Coast mostly. Seattle, San Francisco, parts of LA. Anywhere with large Chinese populations that can serve as liaisons.” Kowalski’s expression was grim. “Can’t blame them, really. When you’re watching your kids starve, you don’t care what flag is on the relief supplies.”

They cleared Albuquerque without incident, climbing back into the high desert. The convoy made good time on empty highways, only slowing for abandoned vehicles or the occasional crater where someone had blown an overpass—whether to stop refugee flows or military movements was anyone’s guess.

At Santa Fe, they found another military checkpoint, this one firmly American. The city had become a major waystation for refugees heading east, and the Army was struggling to maintain order. Tent cities sprawled outside the historic downtown, thousands of people who’d fled the West Coast collapse.

“Ten-minute stop,” Kowalski announced. “Fuel and relief only. Nobody wanders off.”

Reynolds stood beside the Humvee, stretching legs cramped from hours of sitting. A refugee family passed—mother, father, three kids, everything they owned in a shopping cart. The youngest, maybe five, clutched a tablet that would never work again.

“Mister?” The father approached, noticing Reynolds’ flight suit. “You’re military? Is it true the satellites are coming back? The government’s fixing them?”

Reynolds met the man’s desperate eyes. What could he say? That the debris field would last decades? That the cascade was still expanding? That their digital world was gone forever?

“The government’s working on solutions,” he said instead. Not quite a lie.

“I’m an IT manager. Was. Twenty years’ experience. When they fix the networks, they’ll need people like me, right?”

“Right.” This time it was definitely a lie.

The man moved on, pushing his cart full of useless electronics toward an uncertain future. Reynolds wondered how many millions were clinging to similar false hopes, waiting for a recovery that wouldn’t come.

“Mount up!” Kowalski called. “We’re burning daylight.”

North of Santa Fe, the landscape opened into the high plains of Colorado. Here, the collapse took a different form. Small towns had turned insular, suspicious of outsiders. Hand-painted signs warned trespassers about armed responses. Agricultural communities had become fortresses, protecting their crops and livestock from desperate city refugees.

“Can’t blame them,” Kowalski commented as they passed another “LOCALS ONLY - VIOLATORS SHOT” sign. “Food’s going to be the real crisis. Without GPS-guided tractors, automated irrigation, refrigerated transport… this year’s harvest will be a fraction of normal. Next year’s will be worse.”

They stopped for fuel at a military waystation—basically a fortified gas station manned by National Guard. While the vehicles were serviced, Reynolds wandered to the perimeter, looking north toward Colorado Springs, still a hundred miles away.

“Sir?” A young guardsman approached. “You’re Commander Reynolds, aren’t you? From Dragon?”

Reynolds nodded, uncomfortable with recognition.

“My daughter watched your launch. Wants to be an astronaut.” The kid couldn’t be more than twenty himself. “What do I tell her now? That space is closed?”

“Tell her the stars are still there. We’ll find a way back. It’ll just take time.”

“How much time?”

“I don’t know.” Reynolds’ honesty surprised them both. “But humans are stubborn. We’ll figure it out.”

The guardsman nodded and returned to his post. Reynolds remained at the fence, thinking about all the children who’d dreamed of space, now trapped on a planet that had suddenly become much larger and more dangerous.

“Problem ahead,” Kowalski announced when they resumed travel. “Radio chatter about a militia blockade on I-25. Probably after our supplies.”

“Options?”

“Fight through or detour. Detour adds three hours and burns fuel we might need.”

“Your call, Sergeant.”

Kowalski considered. “We go straight. Show weakness now, every two-bit warlord between here and Peterson will try their luck.”

They approached the blockade at sunset, golden light painting the mountains. Two pickups across the highway, maybe a dozen armed men. Amateur hour compared to military checkpoints, but desperate amateurs with rifles could kill you just as dead as professionals.

“Convoy, this is Lead. Weapons free but hold fire unless fired upon. We’re going through.”

Reynolds checked his own sidearm—a Beretta M9 Kowalski had insisted he carry. Twenty years of military service, and he’d fired a weapon in anger exactly twice. Space had been cleaner. Enemies were physics and equipment failure, not fellow Americans driven to banditry.

The militia members stood their ground as the convoy approached, rifles raised but not quite aimed. Reynolds could see the calculation in their eyes—was a truck of supplies worth starting a firefight with actual military?

“Federal convoy on federal highway,” Kowalski announced over the Humvee’s speaker. “Clear the road.”

For a moment, nobody moved. Then one of the militia—older, probably their leader—stepped back. Made a hand gesture. The pickups reversed off the highway, creating a narrow passage.

They’d made the smart choice. This time.

The convoy passed through, every weapon tracking potential threats. Reynolds saw faces in the gathering dusk—lean, hungry, desperate. How many more groups like this between here and safety? How long before desperation overcame caution?

Full dark by the time they saw the lights of Colorado Springs. The city glowed in patches—military installations with generators, some civilian areas with jury-rigged power, vast swaths of darkness between. But it was still alive, still functioning after a fashion.

“Peterson in twenty minutes,” Kowalski announced. “Almost home, Commander.”

Home. Reynolds thought about his house in the foothills, about Janet and the kids. Were they in one of those patches of light or lost in the darkness? Six days since the cascade. Six days of not knowing if his family was alive or dead.

They reached Peterson’s gates—heavy security, professional soldiers, the order he’d grown accustomed to in his military career. But even here, signs of strain showed. Sandbags and razor wire. Guards who looked exhausted. Too many weapons for a stateside base.

“Commander Reynolds, reporting from White Sands,” he told the gate guard.

“Welcome back, sir. Colonel Mitchell’s expecting you. Report to Base Operations once you’re processed.”

Processing was quick—radiation check (debris re-entry could have consequences), medical scan, debrief schedule assigned. Then, finally, freedom to move.

“Need a ride somewhere, sir?” Kowalski offered.

Reynolds looked toward the city, toward home. “I need to borrow a vehicle. Personal business.”

“Take one of the Humvees. Bring it back when you can. And sir?” Kowalski held out extra magazines for the M9. “Just in case. It’s not the same city you left.”

Reynolds accepted the ammunition, hoping he wouldn’t need it. Twenty minutes later, he was driving through Colorado Springs’ darkened streets, heading home. Some neighborhoods looked normal except for the lack of lights. Others showed battle damage—burned houses, improvised barricades, the detritus of social breakdown.

His neighborhood was dark but intact. Middle-class military families, the kind of community that pulled together in crisis. He parked in his driveway, staring at his house. No lights. No movement. The front door stood slightly open.

Reynolds drew the M9, approached carefully. Six days of worst-case scenarios had prepared him for anything. Bodies. Ransacking. Empty abandonment.

He pushed the door open. “Janet? Emma? Tyler?”

Movement in the darkness. A flashlight beam hit his face, blinding him.

“Jack?” Janet’s voice, barely believing. Then she was in his arms, solid and real and alive. “Oh God, Jack. You’re home. You’re really home.”

“Dad!” Emma and Tyler piled into the embrace, and for a moment the cascade, the darkness, the collapse—none of it mattered.

He was home. His family was alive.

Everything else, they’d figure out.

“We saw the launch footage before everything went dark,” Janet said, pulling back to look at him. “Then nothing. Six days of nothing. We thought…”

“I know. I’m sorry. I’m here now.”

“The neighbors said the satellites all crashed. Is that true? Are they really gone?”

Reynolds looked at his family in the flashlight’s beam. His wife, stronger than she knew. His daughter, sixteen and brilliant. His son, thirteen and resilient. They’d survived six days of chaos without him. They’d continue surviving whatever came next.

“Yes,” he said simply. “They’re gone. But we’re not. We’re here. We’re together. We’ll adapt.”

“What happens now?” Emma asked, always needing to understand.

Reynolds thought about Dragon’s crew scattered across the continent. About cities accepting Chinese aid. About militias on highways and refugees in tent camps. About a world suddenly made large and dangerous again.

“Now we learn to live without satellites,” he said. “Together.”

Janet led him inside their powerless home, the kids chattering about their six days of crisis. Reynolds listened, overwhelmed by the simple miracle of their voices. He’d navigated debris fields and plasma fire to get here. Crossed two hundred miles of collapsed America.

Worth every impossible moment.

Tomorrow, he’d report to Peterson, help however he could. Tomorrow, the work of rebuilding—or at least surviving—would begin.

But tonight, he was just a husband and father, home from the longest mission of his career. Home in a world transformed but with the only constants that truly mattered.

His family. Safe.

For now, that was enough.