by Adam Drake
At the tenth floor Nate found a maintenance man up on a low ladder. He was fiddling with an emergency light which was wedged up in a corner.
“Shouldn't those be working?” Nate asked. He'd passed one on each level, all off.
“Should, yeah,” the man said. “But something is wrong with the batteries.” He tapped the large narrow block beneath the light. “Should have switched over to them the second the power went out.”
“The batteries don't work, either?”
The man nodded in the gloom. “Not just these, but all of them.” He held out a large flashlight and flicked its switch back and forth. Nothing happened. “Phones are toast, too.”
“Huh,” Nate said and left the man to his futile efforts. But before he climbed a couple of steps he turned back and asked, “What do you think could do that? Cause a power outage and kill the batteries?”
The maintenance man gave it a moment of thought, then said, “Aliens,” and returned to his work.
For the next eleven floors Nate played that word over and over in his mind. Aliens. That can't be. Could it? An alien attack?
As he finally reached the twenty-first floor, he pushed the thought of an alien invasion out of his mind. He'd think on that later. For now, time to catch up with an old friend.
He left the stairwell and entered a lush office foyer, the kind only lawyer money could buy. There wasn't a receptionist at the desk so he went exploring.
After passing empty cubicles and offices he heard voices coming from an open door marked Board Room.
Inside, he found two men pouring over stacks of papers and giant law books. A pair of laptops sat on the huge table, their screens black.
The men looked up as Nate entered. One of them, a fat man with a stylish goatee and powder-blue tie, gasped.
“What's up, Jonas?” Nate asked the fat man. “Long time no see.”
Jonas stood in alarm as Nate walked up to him. “N-Nate! Oh, what a surprise. I wasn't expecting you.”
“You weren't expecting me?” Nate said, his voice rising with anger. “Jonas, you should always be expecting me.” He pulled out his pistol, but kept it by his side.
“Oh, God!” Jonas said, raising his hands. His fat blubber quivered beneath his expensive clothes. Clothes Nate helped pay for.
Nate grabbed Jonas by his powder-blue tie. “You should have been expecting me every single day since Chris died. Which wouldn't have happened if you did your damned job!”
The other lawyer, tall and skinny with glasses, had stood up. He backed up against the wall, eyes wide with terror.
Jonas was beside himself with fear. “But it wasn't me! It was the judge. You know the evidence was too strong.”
“Too strong?!” Nate screamed, spitting his words over the man's face. “I paid you all that money so the evidence wouldn't matter!”
“B-but they had Chris on video, pulling the trigger! You saw it yourself!”
Nate breathed heavily, his rage growing hotter by the second. “You know they shanked him, right? He bled out in the showers!” He pressed his face up against the terrified lawyer's and screamed, “But before they shanked him, they took turns fucking him in the ass!” Nate's eyes were wide, crazed. “He wouldn't have been there if you did your fucking job!”
The skinny guy with glasses suddenly ran to the door, his tie flapping about. Nate calmly aimed and shot the fleeing man in the head, splattering blood and bits of brain matter over a large beautiful painting of a sailboat.
Jonas cried out in shock then grabbed at his chest in pain.
Nate looked at him in disgust. “Oh, no. You don't get to die on me before I can kill you.” He aimed at one of the nearest windows which lined one wall of the huge room. Six shots punctured the reinforced glass, creating a large cluster of cracks.
Nate heaved the sagging man to his feet. “You got some co-workers downstairs who want to see you, Jonas.”
Jonas gasped in pain, eyes locked onto the shattered window. He shit his pants.
With his free hand, Nate pulled the lawyer along by his tie and hurled him at the window.
“Nooooo!” Jonas screamed, then smashed through the glass and vanished from sight.
Nate peered out the window and watched the fat man plummet. He'd never seen someone fall from this high up, before.
Jonas hit the pavement below narrowly missing groups of office workers. The lawyer didn't so much as splatter as he practically turned inside out with the impact.
As Nate reentered the stairwell and began the long descent, he found one thought playing over and over in his mind.
Aliens. Now wouldn't that be a sight?
CHAPTER EIGHT
Wyatt
The streets were complete chaos.
That would be the best way Wyatt could describe them. Pushing the cart with Ethan's weight wasn't a problem. He'd been pushing carts for years. Despite his lifestyle he ate okay, thanks to soup kitchens and grocery store refuse. He was in fairly good health.
But trying to navigate the streets with all its cars, trucks, and tractor trailers was really getting to him. It was like God dumped all these vehicles in his way to create an obstacle course. To test his resolve. How badly do you want to save your friend, Wyatt? Do you think it will make up for all those things you've done?
By Wyatt's estimation, they had traveled eight blocks in the last two hours. All of it level ground for which he was grateful. But the crowds of people sitting and standing on the sidewalks stopped him dead in his tracks many times.
Attempting to use the road itself had become nearly impossible. As a major thoroughfare, the morning rush hour had been in full swing when everything went dead. Many drivers managed to stop, but others didn't. A chain reaction backed up against another chain reaction. The result was six lanes of vehicular carnage.
The view of so many dead vehicles lined from horizon to horizon reminded Wyatt of those horror movies where the world was ending. People fleeing the city from malevolent aliens, or city crushing monsters, or invading armies. Only none of those scenarios were the case here, but Wyatt would welcome any one of them right now.
He was getting close to losing his temper. But he kept on pushing through. He had to.
Ethan jiggled in the cart, eyes half closed.
“You still with me, buddy?” Wyatt asked as he wiped a thick sheen of sweat from his face.
“Yup,” Ethan said, perking up. “Not going anywhere you ain't taking me.” He looked about at the cars and people they slowly cruised by. “Damn, someone really screwed up somewhere didn't they?”
“How's that?” Wyatt asked. He needed to keep Ethan awake and talking.
“Well, the way I see it maybe the government discovered something they shouldn't have, and this is the end result.”
“Like a bomb?”
“Sure, a bomb, or a device or something meant to knock out the Russians. Only we got hit with it instead. I mean, look around. Have you ever seen anything like this before in all your days? I sure haven't.”
“I'm certain you've seen a lot considering you're older than dirt. But no, I've never seen this before.”
Ethan thought for a moment. “Maybe the sun did it.”
“Okay, the blood loss is making you a little delusional. You've gone from bombs for Russians to the sun. Bit of a stretch?” Wyatt said, teasing.
Ethan shook his head, weakly. “Not at all. Can happen. Oh, hell, it has happened for all we know. Solar flares or sunspots or whatever. Could be that the sun burped and a big ass wave of radiation hit the Earth and knocked out everything electrical.”
Wyatt thought on this a few moments as he swerved the cart around a fat man who stood unmoving in the middle of the sidewalk.
As Wyatt gave the guy a dirty look, he said to Ethan, “Okay, that might make some sense. But I've never heard of this happening before, like ever.”
“Oh, it's happened,” Ethan said as he tried to adjust his position. It wasn't the most comfortable way to sit, espec
ially if you've been stabbed. “Back in the eighteen-eighties or so a bunch of telegraph wires fried out. There wasn't much electrical back then, but what little there was got sizzled.”
“Like sparks and stuff?”
“Yeah.”
Wyatt gazed up at the endless lines of wires which extended from the telephone poles along the road. “Doesn't look fried to me. Everything looks the same, except for all these damned people and dead cars.”
“Yeah. I dunno about that. Maybe it wasn't the sun. Just a theory.”
“But a good one. Better than my theory, by a long way.”
“You have a theory, do you Einstein?”
“Yup.”
“Well, enlighten me, please.”
Wyatt stopped. The tiredness seeped through his bones and joints.
Ethan frowned at him. “Whoa, junior. I think you've overexerted yourself. Take a break. Here, drink some water.”
Wyatt accepted the bottle and took a long swig. His chatting was masking the mounting frustration he felt. “Where is the God-damned clinic?”
He slowly spun around trying to make out all the signs for the different offices and strip malls around them. He'd been checking as they traveled, but nothing close to resembling a clinic presented itself.
Beside them a family sat in a minivan, the side door slid open. He could hear everyone complaining inside, bewildered at their situation. By this time nearly everybody he'd seen had completely given up on their phones and took to interrogating the other stranded people closest to them. Have they heard anything? Did they know what was going on? When would help arrive?
With the moronic conversations, and the heat, and the need to get Ethan some help the tension inside him was building up.
He was afraid it wouldn't take much to make him blow.
“Yo, Einstein,” Ethan barked.
Wyatt snapped out his thoughts. “What? What is it?”
“Lost you there for a second. You were going to enlighten me?”
“Right, sorry,” Wyatt said and handed the bottle back. He resumed pushing the cart. The beginning of the next block was a short distance ahead. Maybe the clinic was there. “My theory is this. I think God finally got fed up with how the world had gone and screwed itself and decided to do a reset.”
“A reset?”
“Yeah, what better way to get people to pull their heads out of their collective asses than to take away what was most important to them?”
“Electricity?”
Wyatt nodded. “Sure. But maybe it's more than that. Take away all the electricity and what do you got left?”
“The mother of all traffic jams,” Ethan offered.
“Yup, that's one thing. But what does that represent? It's not just this traffic jam but the fact that all the cars and buses and stuff no longer work. What happens when they never start up again?”
“A lot of people will have to walk to work,” Ethan said. “Would do them good. Hell, you and I do that every damned day!”
“Yeah, a lot of walking. But where would they be walking to? If they go to the office, and the computers and machines no longer even turn on, what do they do then?”
Ethan looked pensive. “Start dumpster diving?”
Wyatt laughed, something he hadn't done for several long hours. “Well, they could but where would those cans come from? Need machines to make the cans.”
“And trucks to deliver the cans to the store,” Ethan said. “Hell, they couldn't even dig the aluminum from the ground to feed into their dead can-making machines.”
They passed a bus who's passengers now loitered on the grass next to the sidewalk. Hardly anyone gave the two of them a look, so caught up in their own dilemma. Wyatt was used to being ignored all the time. But he found a strange satisfaction in seeing these people totally flummoxed to the point of being helpless. Now he was the one making progress, and they were to be ignored.
Ethan said, “So, no more cans for us?”
Wyatt shook his head. “I don't know, partner. All I do know is if this doesn't fix itself right quick, things are going to get like the Lord of the Flies.”
“Like a bunch of kids on an island?”
“Like no technology. What if one of these saps get mugged, how they going to call the police? What if there's a murder? No cameras around, no phones, no nothing that would normally make someone think twice before committing a crime.”
This thought made Ethan look more pale. “Sheesh, now that is messed up, right there.”
“Okay, back to the cans in the store,” Wyatt said.
“Or not being there any longer.”
“But say there still is. How do you buy it?”
“Money.”
“Yeah, but what money? Everything is electronic. Pay from a debit card or credit card. Can't do that without the juice flowing through those lines overhead. Now, you and I are old school. Everything is cold hard cash with us.”
“If we had any.”
“True, but I'll bet that you and I have more hard currency on us than anyone on this street. They all got cards linked to their bank accounts, which is online. Or was.”
“Shit,” Ethan said, true realization dawning on him. As they passed more stranded people he looked at them with an odd expression.
“What are you thinking now?” Wyatt asked.
“I'm thinking these folks are absolutely screwed. Lord of the Flies is right. You nailed that bang on. But do you really think this will go on for much longer? Can't someone fix this?”
Wyatt shrugged. “To be honest, I don't really care. Right now I just need to get you some help. Electricity or no electricity.”
They rattled down the sidewalk for a while, both men lost in thought.
“I just realized something,” Ethan said.
“Now it's your turn to enlighten me, you old goat.”
“There hasn't been a news or police chopper flying overhead this whole time.”
“No, you're right. I ain't seen or heard one at all.”
“I figure the police would be watching from overhead by now. If they could.”
“If they could.”
“So, if choppers and planes can't take off anymore, what happened to all the ones that were in the sky at the time this occurred?”
Wyatt paused and the rattling mercifully stopped. “God damn, that is one scary thought.”
They both looked up at the sky as if expecting to find a plane descending upon them.
“Jesus,” Ethan said. “Guess Baldy did see something. How many planes are in the sky at any one time?”
“Well, we got the airport, so that means lots of air traffic. I don't know. Lots. But even one plane in the sky is one too many when the power goes out.”
“And what if this crap has effected the entire country? Hell, the whole world?”
Wyatt shook his head. “I don't even want to think on about that. Too terrifying to contemplate.” Then he spotted something further ahead.
“What,” Ethan said, seeing his expression. “What is it now?”
A grin spread across Wyatt's face and his eyes lit up.
In the distance he spotted the one thing he needed to find right at that moment.
An ambulance.
CHAPTER NINE
Nate
Despite wearing boots and a long jacket, Nate rode the mountain bike like he was born to it.
At a guess, it had been seven or eight years since he'd ridden anything with two wheels that didn't have a motor.
He sped down the street, navigating around accidents and dead vehicles. The only real obstacles were people, but those he just yelled at and they quickly scampered out of his way.
Unger's unscheduled check-in would have to wait a little while longer. First, Nate needed to make a pit stop and freshen up. Gotta look good for the boss.
Through a maze of avenues and cross-streets he arrived at a squat house perched close to the road. It was of ancient design, compact and square.
An old hip
py woman sat on the front stoop, smoking a joint. As Nate rode up, she looked him over and raised her eyebrows in surprise. “Nice bike, Nate. Where'd ya get it?”
Nate stopped and got off the bike. The seat was a little low, he'd adjust it later. “Stranger gave it to me.”
The eyebrows stayed up. “Gave it to you? How come?”
Nate leaned his new acquisition against the side of the stairs and shrugged. “He didn't have much of a choice.”
The eyebrows dropped, and the woman resumed smoking, the conversation all but forgotten. Nate sat down next to her.
“Mind if I partake?” he asked.
The woman coughed a laugh and passed the joint over. “When have you ever not?”
Nate took a long drag, letting himself relax. It had been a stressful morning. He needed this.
The street was quiet, almost death-like. Usually cars used this avenue to move between the major roads at either end. But not now. Maybe never again.
Returning the joint Nate said, “How has your morning been, Crystal? Any planes drop out of the sky?”
Crystal sat back against the stairs, smoke forming wisps around her face and trailing through her long gray hair. “Nah, nothing like that.” She thought on the question a moment then turned her sleepy eyes to Nate. “Why?”
Nate laughed at her confusion. Crystal hardly got riled up about anything. The world could end and she'd still be sitting right here on her stoop, smoking or chatting with the neighbors like it was the only business worth getting up to.
And maybe the world was ending.
Unperturbed by his manner, Crystal looked up at the sky lost in idle thought. It was a pose you could almost always find her in.
He said, “You have no idea what's going on out there, do you?”
“Out where?”
He pointed toward the street and waved his arm. “There, out there in the world. You don't know what's happening.”
Crystal shrugged. “Sure I know.”
“What then?”
“A bunch of convoluted crap, that's what. Just only a little different than yesterday, but still shitty as always.”
