Final Chaos

3

“You going to have that custom job ready for this afternoon, Jess?” said Bruce, her boss.

“It’s Jessica, not Jess, Jessie, or anything else you can come with,” said Jessica.

Bruce just laughed. “Just have it ready by this afternoon.”

“You gave me one day to do it.”

“He’s paying top dollar for this. So he gets what he wants.”

Jessica said nothing as she watched Bruce walk away.

Sure, Bruce was getting top dollar for the custom bike, but she wasn’t getting a penny more per hour.

That was the way it was, though, and she needed the job to pay her way through school.

She’d worked at the bike shop for a full two years now. When she’d graduated high school, she didn’t have the money to even attend community college. At eighteen, her parents had thrown her to the curb along with all her stuff and she’d had to support herself ever since.

She’d never begrudged them for it. She’d never really thought much about it, actually. She’d just done what she’d had to do and gotten a job.

Jessica made her way into the back of the bike shop where all the bikes were hanging from hooks in the ceiling. There were mountain bikes, road bikes, BMX bikes, and plenty of those in-between bikes that were so popular, the ones that weren’t really good for anything in particular.

Jessica found the titanium mountain bike hanging near the back, grabbed it, and took it down.

She’d gotten the new wheels on it yesterday, but the bike still needed some serious work. The bottom bracket would probably take the most time. While the frame was made of titanium, the components of the bottom bracket were steel, and there was no doubt in her mind that they’d rusted to hell over the years. It’d be a tough job.

“What’s up, Jessica?” said Tom, sauntering into the shop from the back door.

Jessica just gave him a brief nod as she lifted the bike up to the mechanic’s stand so she could work on it.

“You working on that vintage mountain bike?” said Tom, standing annoyingly close to Jessica, his messenger bag still slung over his shoulder.

Jessica didn’t answer him.

Tom was about Jessica’s age. But that was the end of what they had in common. Tom was a rich kid who went to the University of Rochester. He only worked at the bike shop for something to do, and so he could sound cool and interesting.

Jessica grabbed a bottom bracket wrench and started to work. The lock ring itself was rusted. She leaned down hard on the wrench, but it still wouldn’t budge.

“You didn’t do the bottom bracket yet?” said Tom, in his annoying voice. “That would have been the first thing I’d do.”

“When was the last time you did a bottom bracket overhaul on a bike this old?” said Jessica.

Tom said nothing.

“That’s what I thought,” she muttered.

Tom retreated into the bathroom, probably to check his Instagram account, which was full of the expensive bikes his parents had bought him over the years.

Jessica was still struggling with the wrench when the lights went off.

“What the hell?” yelled Tom, from behind the bathroom door.

She could hear him fumbling around in there.

Jessica wasted no time. She knew she had to get the work done on time, whether a breaker had blown or what.

She reached into her pocket for her cell phone. It was the cheapest unlocked smartphone that she’d found. It wasn’t like she had much disposable income at all, unlike Tom who could buy whatever he wanted.

She figured she could use the light on the phone to keep working. She’d hold the phone under her chin if she had to. She wasn’t going to risk losing her job, no matter how unfair the assignment was.

But her phone wouldn’t turn on.

Maybe the battery was dead.

“My phone’s not working!” yelled Tom from the bathroom.

That was weird. Both their phones weren’t working.

“You guys OK back there?” called out Bruce, from the front of the store. “I’m going to check the—shit!” It sounded like he’d crashed into a couple bikes on display. Jessica heard them fall over, making a loud crashing noise. Bruce swore and yelled in pain.

“You OK, Brucey?” yelled Tom.

“I’m fine. Just get the breaker, will you?”

“As soon as I can find my way out of this bathroom.”

Jessica was no wimp. She wasn’t scared of a little darkness. Or her phone turning off.

But the darkness did remind her of a difficult time. It hadn’t been that long ago. Almost two years to the day, when she’d been knocked off her bike in a dark alley at 11:00 PM. Two men had attacked her.

She didn’t like to remember the details. But suffice it to say, after that she decided that the best thing to do would be to make sure she’d never be a victim again.

And so she’d gotten into guns.

They weren’t considered cool for people like her, bike shop workers. Tom, for instance, would have freaked out if he’d known she’d had a gun. But then again, she’d never really cared much about what people had thought about her. And she was fine doing things her own way.

So she’d taken a gun safety training course, saved up her money, and purchased a Glock 42.

It was a relatively small gun, but still completely functional.

In its slim holster, she could slide it into the pocket of her jeans and no one would know it was there.

She’d gone the pocket-carry route because a holster wasn’t practical for her. The minute she got onto her bike, her shirt would invariably ride up a little, making it difficult to conceal a holster worn any other way than in her pocket.

Sure, she could have gone the ankle route, but she didn’t like the idea of having to reach down that far if she needed the Glock.

If her boss had known she was packing, she would have been fired on the spot. So she kept it on the down low.

Her boss was trying to get himself upright, but in the process he only knocked over more bikes.

“I found the door knob!” shouted Tom.

But she couldn’t even see him emerge from the bathroom. She did, however, hear the old wooden door squeaking on its hinges.

Jessica reached into her right pocket and wrapped her hand around the holster, without taking the Glock or the holster out. The feel of it sent a wave of reassurance through her.

“Can’t you guys help me up?” shouted Bruce.

“My phone doesn’t work!” shouted Tom.

“I knew I shouldn’t have tinted those front windows,” shouted Bruce.

“Hold on, Bruce, I’m coming for you,” shouted Tom.

Jessica decided to leave the two of them to sort it out. She started making her way slowly towards the back of the store.

She bumped into a couple bikes, but she could picture the layout of the back of the store well enough in her head to finally reach the back door.

It was heavy and made of steel. She pushed against the door.

Outside, it was silent. The normal sounds of an occasional passing car were strangely absent.

What the hell was going on?

She had a bad feeling about all this.

Why weren’t the cell phones working? This went beyond just a power outage.

In the back of her mind, something started to float to the surface. She’d been scrolling through the news on the internet before coming into work. There’d been a headline that her sleepy eyes had passed right over. Something to do with the sun. A solar flare? Knocking out electronics?

Could that be what was going on?

Jessica felt the panic starting to rise within her. She felt her mind going back to that night in the alley.

She wasn’t quite sure why, but she didn’t want to head back inside. Instead, she grabbed her bike from the bike rack out back.

She hadn’t brought anything to work with her, so there was nothing to get from inside the shop. She normally bought her lunch from a small deli across the street, and today she’d been planning to do the same.

Not wanting to deal with the obnoxious Tom, or her boss, who would probably want her to continue working on the mountain bike, she grabbed the handlebars of her bike and got onto the saddle.

She patted the Glock in her pocket once again.

She had her foot on the pedal when the door swung open.

It was Bruce, with his slicked back hair and his overly short shorts.

“Where the hell are you going?”

“Home.”

“What about the bike? He’s coming today. What’s the matter with you?”

She didn’t answer.

“If you take off now, that’s it, you’re done. You’ve been a good worker, but you’re too independent. I’ve kept my mouth shut for the most part about it. But this is really the last straw. You can’t just leave because the power goes out. Especially without telling me. Couldn’t you come up with an excuse or something?”

Jessica said nothing.

Something wasn’t right and she wanted to get out of there.

But she was torn. She needed the job. She needed the money.

“Get back in the shop now, Jess,” said Bruce.

His eyes were narrowed in anger.

Jessica said nothing. She didn’t even bother correcting him on her name.

She just pressed down on the pedal, got her balance, and rode down the alley. She didn’t look back.

The street was a strange sight. The streetlights were all out, and there were no lights on in any of the buildings.

She was in downtown Rochester, and while the city’s economic situation didn’t exactly make it a bustling center of commerce, there was still usually at least some traffic.

But no cars moved.

There were some here and there, stopped dead in their tracks on the road. People were standing next to their cars with their doors open, looking around as if in a daze.

Jessica turned her head around as she rode, thinking that the drivers were all looking at something.

But she could see nothing. Nothing unusual except the effects of the power outage and the stopped cars.

Jessica slowed down, applying the brakes, and rode up to a woman about her own age. The woman was standing next to a late model BMW. She was probably a rich kid in college.

“What’s going on?” said Jessica.

The woman snapped her head around to look at her. Her face was heavily made up and she a white t-shirt that had three Greek letters on it. Probably a member of a sorority.

“No one knows.”

“Why are you all stopped in the middle of the road?”

“I don’t know about everyone else, but my car won’t work.”

“It won’t work?”

“Yeah, didn’t you hear me? I was driving and suddenly the engine turned off. I thought I was going to crash into the car in front of me, since my car just kept moving.”

“It kept moving?”

“Yeah, didn’t you hear me?” The woman spoke in an obnoxious tone that was getting on Jessica’s nerves. She was the sort of person Jessica normally tried to avoid. “If it wasn’t for my good driving, I would have had a crash.”

Jessica just sort of nodded at her and got back on her bike, continuing down the road.

This was a lot to process.

So the cars had all suddenly stopped working? Right in the middle of driving?

Jessica had never heard anything like that happening. She had heard stories before of things going wrong in the electronics of newer cars. But those stories had been different. And they’d never involved all the cars on a single street having the same effect.

They were all made by different manufacturers.

It didn’t make sense.

Jessica didn’t know what to make of it. But it increased her resolve to get home back to her apartment.

She lived not far from here. Only about five blocks away.

Her apartment was a small one bedroom unit situated above a pizza shop. She liked it there. The pizza shop wasn’t popular, so it was quiet. And most importantly, it was her own space.

She’d feel safe there.

Jessica leaned in, and took the turn at Second Street.

It felt good to be on the bike. The air was blowing in her face and on her bare arms. It was cool, but she’d heat up soon enough, given the force she was putting into the pedals.

She rode a nice road bike from the late nineties. She’d found the frame in a dumpster and redone everything herself, working late at the shop. It was cheaper than a car, which she couldn’t have afforded.

Single speed bikes and fixed gear bikes were still all the rage, at least among people who worked at bike shops. But Jessica didn’t care about trends. She wanted a practical bike above all else. And especially more than a trendy bike.

On Second Street, the lights in the buildings were all off.

Again, cars were stopped in the middle of the street.

There was one accident up ahead. It looked like an SUV had gone adrift and crashed, jumped the curb, and smashed into a telephone pole. No one seemed to be hurt. The driver was standing nearby, staring at a cell phone.

In some ways, it was a bicyclist’s dream come true.

On her short commute, Jessica was often harassed horribly by the Rochester drivers, who weren’t used to bicycle commuters. Really, she couldn’t blame them. But she also gave it back to them as good as they gave.

Now, there were no cars moving. Jessica’s heart was still beating with anxiety, but she took delight in swerving between the stopped cars and the confused drivers.

She pedaled harder and harder. She shifted gears, getting onto the big ring.

She was going fast now.

She was almost home.

The road was silent. Strangely silent. She only heard the sound of the rushing wind and her own pounding heart.

Suddenly, out of nowhere, she heard a new noise.

It sounded like an engine. A loud one. Like a car speeding along.

But all the cars weren’t working.

Jessica didn’t see it until it was too late.

She didn’t even register what type of vehicle it was. Just that it was speeding right at her. Head on.

She yanked on the handlebars and leaned in, desperately trying to get out of the way.

But it was too late.

The vehicle hit her and she went flying backwards. She flew through the air and time seemed to slow down.

Then she smashed into the pavement. Her shoulder hit first. It happened too fast to notice the pain.

Her head, in its helmet, slammed into the pavement.