One Second After

“Hey, Dad, isn’t this weird?” Elizabeth said with a smile, pointing towards the interstate.

She already had on her best con artist smile. Her head was tilted slightly, a bit of an “ah, Daddy, chill out,” look in her blue eyes, playing every angle. She was, of course, a sixteen-year-old spitting image of her mother and she knew that would melt him. At this moment it also was triggering one helluva protective surge.

He turned his gaze on Ben. The boy had been a member of the scout troop that John had helped out as an assistant scoutmaster for several years. From that angle, Ben was a good kid, smart, made it to Life before dropping out because by ninth grade scouting wasn’t cool anymore. A nice kid, his dad a member of the Roundtable.

But at this moment, Ben was a young man who had damn near been resting his hand on John’s daughter’s butt and lord knows where else over the last four hours.

“Mr. Matherson, it’s my fault, sir,” Ben said, stepping forward slightly. “Elizabeth and I went into the mall in Asheville after school; we wanted to get something special for Jennifer.”

“Whatya get me?” Jennifer asked excitedly.

“We left it in the car,” Elizabeth replied. “Dad, it was weird; the car just died a couple of miles west of town, near our church. It was weird, so we’ve been walking home.”

John glared coldly at Ben and the boy returned his gaze, not lowering his eyes.

The kid was ok, John realized, didn’t lower his gaze or try to act like a wiseass. He knew he had been seen and was willing to face an angry father. Elizabeth and Ben had been friends when in middle school, both were in the band together, and now, well, now it was obvious over the last several months he had turned into “something different.”

It was just that as John gazed at Ben he remembered how he thought at seventeen and what the prime motivator in life was. Jen was looking over at John with just a touch of a sly grin.

“Ben, how’s your grandpa?”

“Fine, ma’am. We was out fishing together on Saturday on Flat Creek and you should have seen the brookie he reeled in, sixteen inches. Made his day.”

Jen laughed.

“I remember going fishing with him on that same creek. He’d always bait my hook,” and she shuddered. “Lord, how I hated doing that. Tell him I said hi.”

“Yes, ma’am, I will.”

“You need a ride home?” John asked, finally relenting.

“No, sir. It isn’t far,” and he nodded to the other side of the interstate. “I can cross right over from here.”

“All right then, Ben, your folks are most likely worried; get home now.”

“Yes, sir, sorry, sir. Hey, shortie, Happy Birthday.”

“Thanks, Ben.” Like most kid sisters, she had a bit of a crush on her big sister’s boyfriend. And Ben, being a smart kid but also, John grudgingly realized, a good kid, had a liking for Jennifer.

“Night, Elizabeth.”

There was an awkward moment, the two of them gazing at each other. She blushed slightly. Ben turned away, walked over to the fence bordering the interstate, and in seconds had scrambled up and over it.

John watched him cross. Several people standing around their cars went up to Ben, and John didn’t move, just watching. Ben pointed towards the direction of the exit into Black Mountain and then moved on. John breathed a sigh of relief.

“Excuse me. Excuse me!”

John looked over again to the fence that Ben had just scaled. A woman, well dressed, dark gray business suit, with shiny shoulder-length blond hair, was coming up the grassy slope, walking a bit awkwardly in her high heels.

“Ma’am?”

“Can you tell me what’s going on?”

As she approached John, half a dozen more got out of their stalled cars and started towards the fence as well.

“I’m sorry, ma’am, I think I know just about as much as you do.”

“I was just driving along,” and she pointed back to the stalled BMW 330 on the westbound side, “and the engine just went off, the same with everyone else out here.”

“I don’t know for sure,” John said, now choosing his words carefully as he watched more people approaching, four of them men in their late twenties, maybe early thirties, big guys, looked like construction workers. Some sort of instinct began to kick in as he watched them come up behind the woman.

“Hey, buddy, how come your car’s running?” one of them asked. The man speaking was nearly as tall as John, stocky and well built. “Don’t know why it’s running; it just is.”

“Well, it seems strange, don’t you think? All these cars out here dead and that old junker still running.”

“Yeah, guess it does seem strange.”

“What did you do to make it run?”

“It just turned on, that’s all,” John said quietly, fixing the man with his gaze and not letting it drop.

“Sir, can you give me a lift into town?” the woman asked.

He looked at the fence that Ben had scaled with such ease. John caught a glimpse of Ben going over the chain-link fence on the far side of the highway and then trotting up the road towards his house.