Friday, May 5th, 2000. 6:54 AM, Central Time.
Glory’s left arm twitches, once, twice. She immediately leans left toward a chair at the
dining table, falling roughly into it as her eyelids begin to flutter. She knows what’s coming next.
Her legs hang crooked to her right, her arms splayed out
across the table. As she stares out at
the world, mute and paralyzed, Glory is surprised to see that her few remaining
party guests are having troubles of their own.
Clutching their heads and staggering, Len and Hannah lean on each other
behind the island in the open kitchen; the lights flicker, and Keith takes a
knee in the middle of the rug. Someone
on the couch, at the edge of Glory’s vision, has her head between her knees.
It passes.
Glory rubs a clammy palm over her forehead, absently straightens
her hair. That was short, thank the stars.
She sets her feet in front of her to stand, sets her hands on the table,
and rises to her feet. Her left arm
trembles again, and it’s back – staring at the table now, she can’t see her
surroundings. The lights are suddenly
much brighter to her, she hears the microwave running, the ceiling fan’s motor whum-whum-whums in a quickening
crescendo. Seconds go by, and it eases
enough for her to sit in her chair, but does not pass. The lights dim, everything’s quiet, someone
gasps. As Glory raises her head, it
comes on again in a slow wave, brightening the lights once more. She can definitely
hear the microwave running. That’s not right. It’s never like this. Alarms sound, the shrill beeps of smoke and
carbon monoxide detectors. A dull thump
as someone falls to the ground. One by
one, lights begin to pop and flare, her stereo screams a burst of static and
dies, the detectors drop out, and Glory registers one brief moment of silence
as she slips away.
Her mind tumbles together in a pile of fragments. Table. Promotion.
Early weekend. Party all night. Her vision coheres as she orients herself in
space. She lifts her head from the table
and cradles it in her hands. What on Earth was that?! She sits for some seconds in silence and
stillness, concentrating on her breathing.
She leans back in her chair and takes in the scene. Michelle’s still on the couch, head between
her knees. Jennie’s on the other end, in
the fetal position. Keith is passed out
across the runner coming from the hallway.
Pile of broken glass in the corner, where her lamp’s bulbs burst. The ceiling fan, thankfully, has a glass
bowl, but the blades have fully stopped.
The television is visibly burnt out, but intact. What
time is it? The clock on the wall
says 12:45, its second hand still – Glory turns around and looks out her window
at early morning over Lake Michigan. That’s a battery-powered clock. How long ago did I change the batteries,
though? Or how long was I out?
“Is – is everybody OK?”
Nobody stirs.
She stands to survey the
damage. Vitals first. She goes to
Michelle, lifts her by the shoulders into an upright position, and tucks her
two fingertips into her neck to check her pulse. Normal,
she’s breathing fine. Glory gives
her a quick jostle.
“Hey, Michelle.
You all right?” No response. She stands up and goes to Jennie at the other
end of the couch. Normal pulse,
breathing fine, unresponsive. Same with
Keith, and with Len and Hannah. OK, at least nobody’s hurt in obvious ways. She sets about checking all her stuff.
The microwave’s digital panel has literally burnt out, scorched
plastic testifying its uselessness. Refrigerator
presumably dead, and best left shut. Gas
from the oven, water from the faucet.
In her bedroom, her laptop has fused with its power cord,
the screen burnt out.
“Oh, no. Oh, no no
no no no –“ she says, calculating exactly how much of a pain in the ass it will
be to replace. And by Monday at the latest.
Glory heads back out to the living room and grabs her purse from the dining
table, fishing out her phone. Its screen
is also burnt out. “Shit!” Wait.
What kind of power
surge would blow out my cell phone? And knock everybody out? Was that an EMP? Are we under attack? Is that even how EMPs work?
Glory goes to the window, stares down nine floors over
Lake Shore Drive and the golf course between her building and the lake. Cars are on the street, but not moving. A few are crashed, but most are just stopped
cold on the road. She checks her
landline on the table nearby, just to be sure – nothing. No beeps or tones or even white noise. What is
going on?
She heads back to her bedroom and sits down at her desk,
head in her palms and thumbs circling her temples. OK,
think it out. It was like a crazy
electrical disturbance, but it seemed to knock everybody out and gave me a
seizure. Everybody else was drinking,
but I only had two drinks four hours apart, thank-you-very-much, and – wait,
what if I’m dreaming right now? She
stares at her hands, wills them to grow another finger, glow blue, waggle
oddly. Nothing. OK. I still haven’t slept. Whatever it was, my building’s still locked,
and I’ll be better at making decisions after I’ve had some sleep. What time is it?
Her eyes land on her pocketwatch, beneath a picture of
her and her friends in costume. Right!
That’s the real spring-driven thing!
She raises it to her ear and hears the familiar ticking, then presses
the button to release the cover’s catch.
Seven fifty-seven on the fifth of May.
Glory wakes up from a dreamless sleep, clear-headed and
dry-mouthed. She sits up in bed, yawns,
and remembers her circumstances in a worrying flash. She stands and goes to her desk, checks her
pocketwatch: quarter to one.
She steps out into the hallway in her shorts and T-shirt,
sees Keith’s shoe on the floor. I could put him… wait… on Jennie’s bed, or
Michelle’s. But then I ought to move Len
and Hannah, too. Or just wake them
up. Or just let them sleep it off. She checks to make sure everyone’s still
breathing, then gets herself a glass of water.
I’m not qualified to deal with
this. Sip. But I should look around and
see what’s going on. Sip. Sip.
Pause. Gulp. Pour.
Sip. Yeah. Just let yourself out the
back way, walk around a few blocks, see what’s going on. If it’s small, you’ll figure it out and
things will get back to normal. If it’s
big, you’ll figure that out and
things will take longer to get back to normal.
But first get the lay of the land, right?
She heads back to her bedroom, dresses, grabs her purse and heads out her front door
into the hallway. Dark. Wonderful.
Glory heads back to her hall closet and grabs a big
yellow flashlight from up on the shelf.
She points it into her open hand and flips the switch – nothing. She toggles it back and forth – twice nothing. She walks back to her bedroom for the little
red flashlight in her nightstand. Also
out. But
I have batteries for this one! She
goes to her desk and fishes a pair of AA cells out of a drawer, unscrews the
back of the flashlight and replaces the duds.
Twists the front – nothing.
Double-checks – double nothing.
She grabs a candle from the corner of her nightstand and a lighter from
its drawer, then heads back into the hallway.
Why do they not
have windows in here, she wonders as she lights the candle after locking
her door. Probably because they depend on a backup grid or some other manner of
emergency power. She finds the stairwell
next to the elevator and heads down.
With nothing but candlelight to walk by, she gets a bit
of vertigo. No sound but her sneakers on
the concrete steps, a narrow column of darkness always to her right. She reaches the bottom and heads out the
hallway to the drive behind her building, then decides to walk to the Dunkin’
Donuts on Irving Park Road where she normally gets her morning coffee.
The stillness hits her first. Nothing is moving. There are no sounds, except for the
occasional bird. Glory walks steadily
West, listening to the sound of her own footfalls. She turns South at the end of the block and
sees a few cars stalled out in their lanes, plus one run up on the sidewalk
rather anticlimactically. The few
nearest her still have their drivers asleep at the wheel, but she can see a
pair with open doors farther down the block, the drivers nowhere in sight. She keeps heading South, and after a couple blocks spots a human silhouette farther on, standing stock still above the cars. As she nears the next intersection, she sees that it’s
a man with his back to her, about halfway down the next block. She pauses at the crosswalk, watches him
stand motionless for a long moment. She
can’t see anything obvious for him to be staring at. Suddenly self-conscious, Glory turns about,
checking for other people. Nobody. Just that one guy. Weird.
She turns right, going a block out of her way, then heads
down North Broadway to Irving Park Road.
She pauses across the street and stares into the windows of the Dunkin’
Donuts. People just standing
around. One of them is eating donuts
from the rack, the rest – wait, no. The
rest of them are sitting in the seats, it looks like. She can’t get too good of a look with all the
business in the windows, but it looks like one guy’s eating donuts while the
rest of them are sitting down at the tables.
Weird.
After staring for another few long moments, periodically
re-checking her surroundings, Glory finally crosses the street and walks in
like she owns the place. The bell chimes
above her head, and she says, “Hi, how’s it – “
1 comment:
OK, I'm intrigued. :)
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