One Second After

“Sure, Bob. Will you be down next month?”

“Look, John, something’s up. Got a problem here. I gotta—”

The phone went dead.

At that same instant, the ceiling fan began to slowly wind down, the stereo in Jennifer’s room shut down, and looking over to his side alcove office he saw the computer screen saver disappear, the green light of the on button on the nineteen-inch monitor disappearing. There was a chirping beep, the signal that the home security and fire alarm system was off-line; then that went silent as well.

“Bob?”

Silence on the other end. John snapped the phone shut.

Damn, power failure.

“Dad?”

It was Jennifer.

“My CD player died.”

“Yeah, honey.” Thank God, he thought silently. “Power failure.”

She looked at him, a bit crestfallen, as if he were somehow responsible or could snap his finger to make the CD player come back on. Actually, if he could permanently arrange for that damn player to die, he would be tempted to do it.

“What about my party? Pat just gave me a CD and I wanted to play it.”

“No worry, sweetie. Let me call the power company. Most likely a blown transformer.”

He picked up the landline phone… silence, no dial tone.

Last time that happened some drunk had rammed into a telephone pole down at the bottom of the hill and wiped everything out. The drunk of course had walked away from it.

Cell phone. John opened it back up, started to punch numbers… nothing.

Damn.

Cell phone was dead. He put it down on the kitchen table.

Puzzling. The battery in his phone must have gone out just as Bob clicked off. Hell, without electricity John couldn’t charge it back up to call the power company.

He looked over at Jennifer, who stared at him expectantly, as if he would now resolve things.

“No problem at all, kid. They’ll be on it, and besides, it’s a beautiful day; you don’t need to be listening to that garbage anyhow. Why can’t you like Mozart or Debussy the way Pat here does?”

Pat looked at him uncomfortably and he realized he had committed one of the mortal sins of parenting; never compare your daughter to one of her buddies.

“Go on outside; give the dogs a run. They’ll have the power back by dinnertime.”

CHAPTER TWO

DAY 1, 6:00 P.M.

Flipping the four burgers on the grill, two for himself, one each for Jennifer and Pat, he looked over his shoulder and watched as the girls played tag with the dogs in the upper field behind his house. It was a beautiful sight, late afternoon sun, the eight apple trees in full blossom, the girls laughing as they dodged back and forth. Ginger, the younger and crazier of the two goldens, knocked Jennifer over with a flying leap as she tried to hold a Frisbee out of her reach, and there were more squeals as the two dogs and two girls piled on each other.

Months ago he had stopped wearing a wristwatch; the cell phone was now his timepiece. He looked through the kitchen window to the grandfather clock; it was just about six. The other kids should have been here by now; the agreement was they could come over for a brief party, but as it was a school night, the party would be over by 7:30. No one had shown yet. For that matter, he thought Jen would have been back long ago.

He lit a cigarette, puffing quickly—it was amazing how annoying a twelve-year-old could be when it came to a “quit smoking, Dad” campaign—and tossed the half-smoked Camel over the patio railing.

Burgers done, he set them on the patio table, went in, opened the fridge, pulled out the cake, and set it on the table, sticking twelve candles in.

Back out again to the deck.

“Dinner!”

The dogs responded long before the girls, racing out of the field, circled

the table, and then sat at their usual begging positions. Pat and Jennifer came out of the field.

“Hey, Dad, something strange.”

“Yeah?”

“Listen.”

He stood there silent for a moment. It was a quiet spring evening, silent except for a few birds chirping, the distant bark of a dog… rather nice, actually.

“I don’t hear anything.”

“That’s it, Dad. There’s no traffic noise from the interstate.”

He turned and faced towards the road. It was concealed by the trees… but she was right; there was absolute silence. When he had first purchased the house, that had been one disappointment he had not thought of while inspecting it but was aware of the first night in, the rumble of traffic from the interstate a half mile away. The only time it fell silent was in the winter during a snowstorm or an accident.

“An accident must of shut it down,” he replied.

It was common enough, the long winding climb up from Old Fort; every month or two a truck would lose its brakes and roll or old folks in a forty-foot-long land yacht would lose it on the twisting turns as the highway zigzagged out of the mountains and down to the Piedmont. One such accident, a hazmat spill with a truck rolling over, had shut down traffic in both directions for over a day.

“Mr. Matherson. That’s what we thought, but it’s weird down there. No traffic jam, just cars stopped all over the place. You can see it from atop the hill.”

“What do you mean?”