Pavement Ends: The Exodus

by Kurt Gepner

  The second door had six inches of insulation and had an overlapping lip that seated into its frame, such that the threshold had to be stepped over. The room on the other side was not large, but had enough space for the two men to stand inside with reasonable comfort. To the left of the door, where a light switch might have been, Hank pulled down a lever that looked very much like it belonged in the laboratory of a mad scientist. A pair of parabolic lamps, clamped to the ceiling joists on each side of the door, flared to life.

  "Hey!" Salvador all but shouted. "How? What did you do?"

  Hank beamed an unrestrained grin at his son-in-law. He pointed to the wall, left of the door. A grid of batteries, five wide and five high, took up the width and most of its height. Above the shelves was a collection of wires and equipment that looked pretty sophisticated to Salvador’s eyes. Directly across from the door a wood crib stretched from floor to ceiling and about four feet wide. It was full of split wood. Against the wall, opposite the battery bank, stood the most peculiar contraption upon which Salvador had ever laid eyes.

  There were large ducts that ran up through the ceiling and a fat, black cable that ran up the wall and stretched over to the batteries. In the center was a large, solid wheel with gear teeth engaging the teeth of another smaller wheel. Below, on the right, a heavy steel door stood open, revealing a chamber full of wood ash. Beside the door an empty bucket sat, with a scoop and whisk.

  "What’s that?" Salvador pointed at the mechanical thing that looked modeled after some sort of whiz-bang machine from a Dr. Seuss story.

  Hank pointed at the batteries and said, "If that’s the fat, then this is the stomach." Salvador’s brows furrowed as he attempted to comprehend the metaphor. Hank shot a grin at his son-in-law and said, "Never mind. Okay, here’s the run down. This," he said, patting the machine, "is a steam engine." Hank knelt and started filling the bucket with ashes from the furnace. "As you can see, I hadn’t got around to cleaning up since the last time I fired her up."

  "What does it do?" asked Salvador.

  "Oh no!" Hank jumped to his feet and laid his arms across the steam engine, as if it were a beloved companion. "You can’t call her ‘it’. She’ll get offended and blow a gasket. Her name is Lilly and she is sensitive."

  Choking back a strong desire to accuse his father-in-law of being on drugs, Salvador asked, "What does Lilly do?"

  A childlike grin parted Hank’s whiskers as he launched into the details of Lilly’s workings. "For starters," Hank said, "this is a totally enclosed system. There are two tanks of water." He rapped his knuckles on the tank over the furnace. "This one is the boiler and the one in here," he said with a rap on the other end, near the duct that climbed through the ceiling, "is the return tank."

  "Uh-huh…" nodded Salvador.

  Hank rambled on. "Under the return tank are four heavy-duty radiators."

  "You like heavy-duty things, don’t you?"

  "You noticed? Awww…" Hank simpered and let go a quick laugh before continuing. "So the steam drives this motor, which spins this flywheel I got off a duce-and-a-half."

  Furrowing his brow even more deeply Salvador asked, "A what?"

  "A duce-and-a… an Army truck." Hank took a breath and picked up his rhythm. "The steam that pushes the motor passes on to the radiators. I had to split the line, because the pressure is just too much for one radiator to handle."

  "Uh-huh," Salvador said, feeling a glaze wash over his eyes.

  "So the steam splits and goes through the radiators, which cool it back into water. The water is dumped into the return tank, which sits under the radiators. Right inside here is a high pressure pump, which injects the condensed water back into the boiler."

  Hank stood proudly and waited for Salvador’s compliment.

  "Let me see if I have this straight," Salvador began. "You burn wood and boil water…."

  "Yep!" Hank nodded vigorously.

  Salvador rolled his hand as he went on. "The steam turns a wheel and then gets turned back into water…."

  "Yep!" Hank gleefully confirmed.

  Another roll of his hand and Salvador continued. "And the water is put back so it can start all over again?"

  "Yep!" Hank crowed.

  "Why?" asked Salvador.

  Hank’s crest fell. "I guess I left out a few things."

  Salvador shrugged noncommittally. "You tell me."

  "Uh… yeah. So this flywheel spins this generator, which charges those batteries. The house," Hank said, "can be run off the batteries for a long time, if you keep your power usage low." He pointed to the electronic equipment above the batteries. "That’s where all of the power conversion takes place. The juice from the generator goes in and then what comes out of the batteries goes into the house."

  "Okay," Salvador said. "But how is it all working? Everything got fried."

  "Ah," Hank said with a snap of his fingers. "Not everything. Computer circuits, things running on batteries and things plugged into the grid got fried. But the Duck Truck didn't."

  "The Duck Truck?" Salvador winced at the idea of another machine with a name.

  Hank smiled sheepishly. "It’s what we call the pick-up, because Camille hand painted that truck green and yellow." Hank shrugged. "It makes him happy."

  "Green and yellow?" Salvador asked, missing the significance.

  Hank was surprised that his son-in-law didn't make the connection. "The colors of the Oregon Ducks?" Salvador shrugged. "The University of Oregon, where Susanna Rae and Evie both got their degrees."

  "Oh..." Salvador said, but he was feeling frustrated. "Listen, I’m not trying to be rude, but could you get to the point?"

  "Was there one?" Hank asked innocently.

  "You’ve got to be kidding me!" Salvador flared with exasperation.

  "Yeah. I am." Hank chuckled. Then he dropped his smile and took a more sober approach toward his son-in-law. "Look, Salvador, you’ve got to lighten up. There’s plenty of time to be serious. I mean, we’ve already seen some terrible stuff. And you can bet it will get worse before it gets better. But for this moment, we’re not pressed, so take the time to enjoy it."

  "You kicked me in the nuts!" Salvador snarled.

  Hank looked at him as if to say, "Do you really want to go there?"

  Salvador compressed his lips into a thin line, swallowing his ire. "I’d enjoy the moment a lot more if you would tell me how all this stuff didn’t get fried when whatever happened…. happened."

  Briefly, Hank looked contemplative, as if deciding the best path to take. "Okay, so here’s the simple reason why this stuff works and so does the truck: an E.M. Pulse, like what is caused from an atmospheric nuclear detonation, creates electrical current in metal, because when a magnetic field passes through metal, electrons begin to flow." He looked squarely at his son-in-law and said, "high-school physics."

  Then he continued his explanation. "Power lines can build up a massive charge, which feeds back into the things that are plugged into it. It’s just like getting hit by lightning. Most breakers wouldn’t have been able to stop the surge that came ripping through the line, before it was too late.

  "If it’s strong enough, batteries are drained, or completely fried. But the Duck Truck has a short somewhere in its electrical system…" He gave a sheepish shrug and said, "I couldn’t find it, so I put a quick-disconnect on the battery cable…. Anyway, when it’s not running, we disconnect the battery and let the cable dangle."

  "So it couldn’t arc," Salvador deduced.

  "Exactly!" Hank said with a finger leveled at Salvador. "Camille obviously went out and hooked up the battery in the Duck Truck and she started right up. That battery didn’t fry and neither did these."

  "Because of that switch?" Salvador pointed at the large lever affixed to the wall.

  "Right," Hank said.

  "How did you do all this?" Salvador waved at the contraption. "And why?"

  "Kyle," Hank sadly sighed his answer. "He and Izzy stayed with us while he was going t
hrough his divorce. We did this project, re-wired the house and installed a few other safeties just to keep his mind off of things. The amount of back-up and redundancies in this place are ridiculous," he said with a shrug. "But… that’s what you do for family."

  "So… does the house have power, now?" Salvador asked with a twinge of excitement.

  "Nope," Hank shook his head. "Not ‘till I flip a switch in the electrical panel."

  Salvador was feeling a surge of hope. "Well then, let’s do it!"

  Hank smiled. "First we’ve got to tour the house."

  "Make sure everything’s off or unplugged?" Salvador was already heading out the door.

  Hank followed right after him. "You got it."

  CHAPTER THREE

  In the lantern-lit living room, where the Yost family, Candice and Pauline were huddled, Hank cupped his hands around his mouth and bellowed. "Okay! Everybody quiet and listen up!" His voice boomed through the house. He waited a few seconds until all of the ‘shushes’ had diminished to silence and then bellowed on. "Wherever you are, make sure that everything is unplugged and all switches are off. We should have power again, real soon."

  Jeremy took the initiative and scurried through the living room and dining room. "Nothing there. Nope. Nothing plugged in there…."

  Hank explored the master bedroom where Brian was convalescing. The immense man was propped up to a nearly seated position and the blanket had rolled down to expose his bruised and bandaged blubber. Tearing his eyes from the macabre scene, Hank unplugged a lamp and briefly considered a blackened alarm clock that stank of ozone. It couldn’t have been scorched, unless Evie had left the power on in that room. Her lax attitude toward conservation had always been a point of contention between them. Oh well, he thought as he tossed the hunk of useless plastic into the trash.

  Salvador worked his way through the kitchen and out to the back porch. His in-laws kept an old refrigerator out there, full of homemade dog food and, to Salvador’s joy, beer. He grabbed one and reveled in its each and every quality: the crisp snap of released pressure when he opened it, the cold bitterness that washed over his tongue and down his throat and the glow of released tension that spread, almost instantly, from his core when he brought the bottle down from his first long pull.

  In the basement, Hank discovered that the electrical panel was charred and also carried the stench of ozone. The plastic casing that enclosed each breaker was melted into slag. Hank hollered. "Salvador!"

  "Yeah!" Salvador hollered back. Despite the events throughout the day, he was feeling an uncanny sense of relaxation.

  "We’ve got a problem." Hank bellowed up to him.

  Moments later, Salvador stomped down the stairs, followed by Dale, who was still gleaming from his reunion. When they came into the oversized bathroom, where the breaker box was located, Hank’s flashlight illuminated the fricasseed plastic and metal.

  "Oh, shit," Dale muttered.

  "What’s up?" Evie’s voice floated in from the doorway.

  Salvador answered. "The circuit breakers are toasted."

  Hank turned to face the group. He looked ready to say something, when he noticed the beer in Salvador’s hand. Pointing at it, he demanded, "What the hell are you doing?"

  "What?" Salvador took a half-step back, prickling defensively.

  Hank focused his beam on the bottle in Salvador’s hand. It was a Moose Drool, by the Big Sky Brewery. "Why are you drinking that?"

  "I was thirsty and a beer sounded good!" Salvador’s pitch climbed.

  Evie chimed in. "Hank! Lay off him. You all need a beer!" She turned and said, "In fact, I’m going to open enough for all of you."

  "Evie…" Hank began.

  Evie turned, already speaking loud enough to shut up her husband. "And what’s more, I think Salvador deserves as many as he wants, considering the lives he saved today." The fire in her eyes was unmistakably focused, laser fine, upon Hank.

  "Now, while I get you those beers and some sandwiches, why don’t you boys figure out this little mess." Over her shoulder she threw out a final comment. "You might check out the new electrical panel that you got for the new addition you’re building over the garage."

  Hank’s face fell as Evie left the room. Then, as quickly, Hank let go a boom of laughter. "You’re a genius, Evie!"

  It took the better part of an hour to pry the ruined breakers from the box. Once removed, however, replacing them took very little time. Hank had to merge several circuits, because he and Kyle had originally wired each room separately. There were not enough breakers from the new building to accommodate such an eccentric scheme. After another half-hour of Dale holding the light and Salvador assisting where he could, they were ready to give life to the house again.

  The two men positioned themselves upstairs to watch for any troubles. Hank hollered out. "I’m switching it on now! Yell if you see sparks!"

  Hank heard shouts of readiness from different quadrants of the house.

  Drawing in a deep breath, Hank took a hold of the lever that switched the house onto the alternate power. Closing his eyes and priming his ears to hear any tell-tale buzzes, he jerked the lever into place. His heart thumped heavily in his chest and still he held his breath, listening. Finally Hank expelled his air and, feeling dizzy, hollered up to his son-in-law. There was no trouble up there. He called on Evie and Dale: nothing in their areas. He called out to Camille. He got no response.

  "Camille!" Hank called out. Nothing. Hank crossed from the bathroom to the door below the staircase. He rapped on it. "Camille?" Still no response. Hank opened the door. Camille’s feet were hanging off the end of his couch. Hank listened…

  Puff, was the sound he heard, followed by a light snore as Camille took a shallow breath. Silence. Then, puff. Hank lit Camille’s face with the flashlight. He was lying on his back with his fisherman’s cap over his eyes. Hank flipped the switch by the door and the room flooded with light. Camille snoozed on. He turned off the light and closed the door.

  Hank went through the house systematically. In every room a sigh of relief accompanied the cool wash of light when he turned it on. Some bulbs he had to replace, others gleamed brilliantly, right away. Where a fixture held more than one bulb, he removed the extras and redistributed them. As he examined outlets and appliances, Hank used an indelible marker to draw an "X" on what no longer worked. Any appliance that had a digital display or "touch sensitive" controls had been rendered useless. That meant the stove, the refrigerator, microwave, dishwasher, espresso machine and even their toaster was dead.

  If a light was on during the event, then it had burned out. All of the bulbs in the free-standing lamps were burned out for some reason, whether or not they had been turned on during the disaster. Except for the bathroom, all lights were of the energy-efficient, florescent or LED sort. Evie had insisted on using incandescent bulbs in the bathroom, because they didn’t wash out ones complexion when looking in the mirror. Hank thought they hadn’t done much for Susanna Rae’s complexion.

  Most of the basic equipment still operated. The coffee grinder and percolator worked. The blender was too sophisticated to have survived. Hank put fresh batteries in all of the wall clocks and they again began to tick away the minutes. The antique clock on the mantle had not ceased to keep time. He smiled as he wound it with its special key. It was nearly ten o’clock at night. The furnace was scorched and even if natural gas were still flowing into the house, it wouldn’t be safe to use. The on-demand water heater was in a similar fix.

  With the exception of the cordless variety, all of the power tools were functional. Hank finished his tour by ascending the stairs up to the apartment he was building over the shop. He propped a ladder against the framework and climbed to the peak. Then he looked around. A strange light wavered overhead, brightening the sky so that the stars seemed dim. Hank wondered at the wavering lights. He had never before seen the Aurora Borealis, but he knew that was what shimmered above him now. Aside from the scintillating curtains of c
olorful light, there was a new and heavy darkness that filled the horizon.

  Normally, from this vantage point, his range of view was about a mile, except the distant hills and mountains. Unlike any experience in his past, his saw only a few small pinpoints of light. At most, each was no more than a bonfire, given the color and flickering quality of light. Considering the expanse of sprawl that he knew to be out there, it was quite eerie to see the void that stretched before him.

  Then Hank looked down at his house. Clean, unflickering, electric light spilled from every orifice in the dwelling. Like a beacon, it stood out as a unique relief to the vastness of nothing that surrounded it.

  Vaulting down the ladder and steps with a reckless haste, Hank flew through the cellar and into the generator room. A small spark was the only protest made by the power system when he shut it off. Inside the house, even from his point of isolation, he heard a collective groan over the loss. A child began wailing in despair, followed by another and another. Hank let himself back into the house and met Evie in the kitchen.

  "What happened?" Evie asked with concern.

  "I turned off the power," Hank answered.

  After years of life, practically sharing the same skin, Evie knew there would be no more to the answer than her husband had supplied, if she didn’t ask. "Why?" she inquired, with a drawn out voice.

  "Because," Hank answered, "nobody else has power. I climbed up to the top of the guesthouse. It’s dark everywhere but here. We may as well be waving a flag and shouting, ‘hey everybody, come over here!’"

  "Oh…" Evie was contemplative. "So we can’t even light candles?"

  Hank sighed, long and languidly. "That’s not very reasonable, is it?" Hank heard one of the children crying downstairs.

  "Not really, no," Evie answered. "Look, Hank, aside from the fact that the children are terrified, we need to be able to see or we’ll be tripping over ourselves. Why don’t we do this: we’ll hang towels over the downstairs windows and close the drapes, so we can have some light."