Bad Glass

MAYOR JEFFREY SLOCUM: Now that … I do not appreciate the tone of your question! This city’s local government is doing extremely well given these trying circumstances—with all you jackals, all the national media, watching and salivating. Let me tell you … things are starting to fall into place, and normalcy is being—

Without warning, the mayor disappears.

In one frame, he is standing at attention behind the lectern, hammering his finger down to make a point. In the next, he is gone. There is no break in the tape, no sign of a splice; there is no hitch of digital editing. Just, suddenly, a vacant lectern set in the middle of the screen, the words MAYOR JEFFREY SLOCUM still superimposed beneath.

Now, where the man had been, there is nothing but pale blue background. And the city seal, swaying slightly in the air-conditioned breeze.

The mayor’s disappearance is greeted with a sudden silence. Then the entire room reacts. Some of the handheld microphones withdraw in surprise, and others suddenly jerk forward. Somebody bumps the camera, and the image shakes for a moment. After a couple of seconds, one of the mayor’s staff moves slowly across the stage, glancing back offscreen every couple of steps. Stricken, the woman looks back and forth, then down, beneath the lectern. Finding nothing, she turns back and shakes her head, her eyes wide.

The video ends.

I heard them moving about the house while I dozed. Morning sounds. Footsteps and creaking bedsprings. Quiet voices and running water. Doors opening and falling shut. The smell of cooking tickled at my nose, but my sore muscles and foggy head kept me under the quilt. Finally, a beam of sunlight found the sofa, shining orange-red through my eyelids, and I managed to pull myself awake.

By then, the house was once again quiet. The voices were gone, and there was no sign of movement. Maybe they all packed up and left, I thought. Or maybe, in the early-morning hours, I’d managed to dream them all away.

Still half-asleep, I got up off the sofa and went looking for signs of life.

I found Charlie in the kitchen, sitting at a table in the breakfast nook. The room looked different in the morning light: the sun poured in through the open curtains, bathing everything in a blindingly bright haze. Charlie was tapping away at a tiny notebook computer. When I stepped through the door, he cast a quick glance up, then went right back to work.

“Do you have a Gmail account?” he asked, still typing away.

“Gmail?” I grunted, wondering if I’d stumbled into the middle of someone else’s conversation. I rubbed at my sticky, sleep-blurred eyes. “You can’t possibly have Internet access here—no power, no landlines, no cell signal. The military’s got that all wrapped up tight. Right? Communication blackout … all that happy shit.”

“I cobbled something together,” he said with a sly smile. He spun the computer around and showed me the program on its screen. It looked like a simple email program. There was a tab at the top with my name on it (next to separate tabs for Charlie, Taylor, and everyone else), and then, down below, there was space for account information, an address line, a subject line, and a large text field for the body of a message. “If you fill in your stuff, we can smuggle it out. It’ll also capture your incoming mail.”

I stared at the computer for a moment, then, suddenly struck by what I was seeing, spun it back around and checked its rear panel. “The battery … it’s charged? Where are you getting the power?”

“We’ve got a source.” Again he flashed that sly smile.

My shoulders slumped, and I let out a disappointed groan. I’d spent over a hundred dollars on an external grip for my camera—one that took disposable batteries in lieu of rechargeable power—and I’d stocked up on a shitload of AAs. Not to mention a second battery for my laptop.

I turned the computer back around and stared at the mail program for nearly a minute. My fingers hovered over the keyboard, tense, itching to write. But who could I contact? Who would understand? My friends in California? My father? Not bloody likely, I thought. At this point, there probably wasn’t a soul in the world who had even noticed that I was gone.

As I was thinking, Taylor stormed into the house. She moved in a loud rush, crashing from the front door, through the hallway, into the kitchen. She saw me at Charlie’s computer and let out a deep cluck. “No time for that,” she said. “No time. I told Danny I’d be there at noon.” Charlie pulled the computer back across the table and resumed typing, faster now, trying to get something finished.

“Next time, Dean,” Taylor said. “Next batch.” She pointed toward my bags in the living room. “Now, get dressed and ready to go. You’ve got a lot to see here, and I figure we should start at the top. Which means moving … fast!”