Blackout

11

We sat around like that in the dark for some time until I got sick of it. I went down in the basement and looted around in the camping supplies until I found a couple lanterns and a few more flashlights. I was using Bonnie’s lighter to find my way around as I’d lost my flashlight outside somewhere. Maybe it was still in the truck. I didn’t know.

“You got any beer?” I heard her call from the top of the steps.

“It’s in the fridge out in the back hall, not the one in the kitchen,” I called up to her and I heard her relay the message to Billy, no doubt. Then she was coming down the steps, guiding herself along by feel.

“You need help with anything?”

“I’m just throwing some stuff together.”

Bonnie took the lighter and lit a cigarette. I couldn’t take it anymore. I bummed one off her and the nicotine lit fireworks in my brain. The addiction was back, full throttle.

“What are we going to do, Jon?”

“I don’t know. For now we’ll get some lights going and then we’d better take stock of the food. Power’s out, but Kathy…she always has lots of canned stuff and boxed dinners. I have a couple cases of bottled water upstairs. If we have food, light, and water, it should make us feel human anyway.”

“We better start with the fresh stuff.”

I pulled off the cigarette. “Lots of fruit and veggies on stock. Still have steaks and corn left from the party.”

We finished our cigarettes and then butted them out. I handed her one of the lanterns and then she took my hand. I thought she was giving me something, but she pressed my fingers against the globe of her breast. It was very warm, very firm. The nipple was hard under my fingertips. I didn’t pull my hand away as quick as I should have, I guess, but I did pull it away.

“You don’t like me?” Bonnie said, pulling her shirt back down.

“It’s not that. I’m married…I don’t know what’s going on.”

She sighed. “I’m sorry. I’m not really good for anything else.”

“Yes, you are.”

She laughed sarcastically. “No, I’m not. I never have been.” She sighed again and I thought I heard her sobbing. “I’m afraid to die. I know I’m going to. I know that thing up there is going to get me and I’m afraid. Sometimes when I’m afraid, I don’t do the right thing.”

“None of us do.”

We went upstairs and I got fresh batteries for everything. Thank God Kathy was one of those people who stockpile things. We lit one lantern to conserve battery power. Iris was still watching out the window. Billy was sitting in my recliner, drinking my beer. Ray Wetmore was in the corner sitting on Kathy’s rocking chair. He was not saying a thing. I half expected him to bounce back and become our local politician and leader once again, but it wasn’t happening. Bonnie sat on the couch and I sat by her, but not too close. I was thinking about Erin over in Italy and praying this was localized and not global. Every other thought was of Kathy. I knew she was gone. I knew I’d never see her again. The depth of that pain was immense, but I could no longer pretend she was hiding somewhere or just hurt and had crawled into the bushes. The truth was, she would have done neither of those things. Her first thought would have been of me and even if she was half-dead, she would have crawled through hell to get to me.

I sipped a beer and smoked another cigarette. The only thing that was pulling me through was the idea of sunrise. When the world was bright, there might be hope and I was clinging to that.

“Anything out there?” I said to Iris.

“It’s quiet, real quiet.”

I went over to her and looked out into the night. Most of the fires had died down to coals, but a couple were still burning. The light they threw showed me a world of abandonment. Lots of tree limbs down from the wind, beer and pop cans blown out into the street, garbage in yards. Other than that, it looked like some kind of primordial jungle out there with all the cables hanging down like vines. I could see dozens upon dozens of them just waiting to trap the unwary.

“I wonder what comes next?” I said pretty much under my breath, but Iris heard me.

“Either they pack up and go away or they step things up,” she said.

I watched with her for some time, knowing she was right. The tension inside me had not lessened; it was worse, if anything. The waiting, the wondering, it was eating at us but there was nothing to do but let things play out. The lot of us were so juiced up, you could have plugged us into the wall. Just as I was about to leave and go back to the couch, Iris made a funny sound in her throat like a sudden intake of breath.

I didn’t need to ask what caused it, I saw just fine.

That weird blue orb that I had seen downtown was now drifting in our direction. I watched it hover lazily over distant rooftops, seeming to sweep back and forth like the eye of Polyphemus seeking out Odysseus and his men. I didn’t know what it was, but the sight of it filled me with terror because I knew without a doubt it was looking for us. Maybe it wasn’t an eye exactly, but I had a pretty good idea it served roughly the same purpose. It moved off to the east and disappeared and I started breathing again.

“Like a searchlight,” Iris said.

“Yes.”

“What are you two blathering on about over there?” Billy asked us.

Did I tell him the truth? One look at Iris and I knew the answer to that. They were all better off not knowing. No sense in increasing their anxiety, which I figured had to be approaching dangerous levels. I went and sat back on the couch, pulling from my beer, which seemed to have absolutely no flavor. I watched the others, trying to gauge what was going on in their minds.

Over by the window, Iris was grim and determined. Despite her age, she was watching not only the world outside but the world inside. We were her flock and she was mothering over us. It was the only thing she really could do and she did it obsessively.

Ray was coming apart at the seams and I knew it. Gone was the public speaker and politico, the great debater of forgotten causes, the perpetual thorn in the foot of the city council. The last time I’d even seen the old Ray was when he and David Ebler had picked apart the story Bonnie and I told of the cables. He waited over there in the corner, chewing his nails, his eyes wide and glassy. It was unnerving.

Billy was just Billy. He drank his beer and made with the small talk, bitched about the world in general and told stories of a workingman’s life. It was business as usual with him. He was just one of those guys you couldn’t shake. At least outwardly. Inside, I suspected he was just as scared as the rest of us but he was too practical, too blue collar, and too tough to show it.

And Bonnie? What did one say about Bonnie? Nervous? Yes. Scared? Yes. She kept tapping her long nails on the end table. Her eyes were bright and wet in the darkness. She was complex. Around the neighborhood she was known as a flirt, but like all women who acted that way there was a deep inner reason, some trauma or fear that cried out in pain from her depths. She was a very attractive woman and had used her looks to get attention her entire life. My rejection of her in the basement had thrown her for a loop. She had probably never been rejected by a man and she was having trouble handling it. She kept staring at me as if she had no idea what to make of me.

And me? I was just scared and confused. I didn’t know what to think about anything. I had these very unpleasant images in my head of us still hiding like this six months from now. That was the most terrifying prospect of all, that there was no end in sight, that this nightmare would just keep going on and on like the plot of a crappy postapocalyptic novel.

Anyway, that was our group.

Good, bad, or indifferent, it was all we had.

The five of us. It made me think of that terrible old 1950s B-movie, The Last Woman on Earth. Two guys and one woman survive the end of the world and, of course, the men fight over her. I wondered if Ray and I would be fighting over Bonnie in six months. I doubted it. Billy could have easily kicked both our asses. Besides, Ray was no lover boy. He was divorced and had no time in his life for anything but politics. And I would have a hell of a time getting over Kathy.

So there we waited.