Natalie was struck then by an insight so obvious that it was shameful to have only just thought of it. Everything that had happened this morning—the immobilized cars, the power blackout, the dead cell phones—was almost identical to the central premise of Thomas’ new screenplay. He’d told her about it at the reunion, about how much the concept had frightened him while writing it. In his movie the event had been caused by the sun, but the effect was essentially the same.
Cool dread seeped upward from her toes, as if she were being lowered into a dark lagoon. Because in the story Thomas had written, everything that died stayed dead. It was the computer chips inside things that were fried, and they couldn’t be easily replaced because the machines that manufactured such chips required chips themselves. Natalie hadn’t understood the interest in a movie like that, since the lives of each character became immediately worse after the pulse and kept on getting worse. What followed was a gradual descent of American culture into a savage state just this side of the stone age.
“I can’t believe you’re not more worried about this!” she said and gestured toward the column of black smoke on their right. “On top of everything else, a freaking plane crashed.”
“Look, I realize this is a messed-up situation, but I don’t see how it helps to panic.”
“Who’s panicking? I just want to make sure my children are safe.”
“Why wouldn’t they be?”
“Because this is happening and I’m not there!”
“I’m saying unless a plane went down on top of the daycare, they’re fine. They probably don’t realize anything is wrong except the power is out.”
“People at the daycare might be doing what I’m doing. Going home to get their children. Then mine are left all alone.”
“You think anyone would abandon a group of children at daycare?”
Natalie swerved around a glut of stalled traffic at the Riverside intersection. There were at least ten cars crowded next to each other, filling all available lanes in both directions, as if an accident had occurred. People were looking at the road or at the sky or both. Someone yelled “Hey, lady!” but Natalie drove on without looking to see who it was.
“You’re being an ass,” she said to Blake.
“And you’re being hysterical.”
“I am not hysterical!”
They rode in silence for a while. At a Burger King she saw a line of stalled cars in the drive-through lane. Thirty or forty people stood in the parking lot of Quik Trip. There were people on sidewalks and loitering in the street with strange looks on their faces, confused or expectant or frightened. No one seemed to know what to do.
Beyond the Lewis intersection, 71st Street was almost empty, but it was also the beginning of a long, uphill climb. The drink cart’s motor began to protest and they slowed down dramatically.
“Shit,” she said to Blake, to the awful world at large. “We’re not gonna make it.”
“Sure we will. Golf carts don’t go very fast, but they have plenty of torque.”
“For such a smart guy you can be pretty dumb about life.”
The cart continued to climb the hill steadily, as Blake had predicted. Despite his annoying comments, Natalie was glad he had come along. She was afraid the only reason some other man hadn’t approached her was because she wasn’t alone.
And once she secured her children, what then? How long would it take Seth to walk home from work? Hours, surely. Maybe he’d stay at the office, expecting the power to be restored sooner instead of later. Or maybe he would abandon his family the way Natalie had often feared.
Her mouth tasted like pennies. For a moment she thought she might faint. Blake seemed to notice and squeezed her shoulder.
“You okay?”
“No,” Natalie said, suddenly overcome with tears.
“Want me to drive?”
“Would you?”
They stopped and switched places, but afterward Natalie wished they hadn’t. Without the road and its obstacles to distract her, she retreated into her mind where there was nothing to do but worry. Her heart beat too fast. Her limbs felt heavy. Her thoughts degraded into static, audible static, the sound a radio made when it was tuned into nothing. It was a painful sound she endured all the way to the daycare, and even then it didn’t really end.
Blake waited with the drink cart while Natalie went inside to retrieve her sons. The daycare was housed in a newish brick building made to look on the outside like a residence. Even with plenty of windows, the entryway was uncomfortably dark. A frail woman of about sixty rounded a corner and intercepted Natalie on her way to the classroom.
“May I help you, ma’am?”
“I’m here to pick up my sons. Ben and Brandon Black. They’re in the second-grade drop-in class.”
“Of course,” the woman said. “And your name is…?”
“Natalie Black. I’ll just head back to the classroom and get them.”
But the frail woman, who couldn’t have weighed one hundred pounds, stepped into her path.
“Mrs. Black, may I ask you to wait a moment while I go talk to the teacher? It’s been quite a morning and we’re trying to be as careful as we can with the students.”
“I’m here to pick up my children. It has been quite a morning, and I’d like to take them home if you don’t mind.”
“Please,” the woman said. “Wait here just one moment. I’ll be back with Miss Lopez shortly.”
Natalie’s nerves were bare wires and she was close to faltering. But losing her cool now, when she was so close to seeing her sons, would only make things worse.
“Of course,” she said. Her teeth chattered and her hands shook so badly she was forced to knot them behind her back. “I’ll just wait here.”
The old woman disappeared around the corner. Natalie’s insides were gelatin and her toes tingled with electricity. Adrenaline had dominated her bloodstream since the new star appeared, and she was tired, irritable, vulnerable. She was not prepared to see Miss Lopez appear without Ben and Brandon at her side.
“Mrs. Black,” said the teacher, who was a little younger than Natalie and beautiful. She’d always been jealous of women with olive skin and brown hair, of their effortless sexuality. “I’m sure this is confusing, but—”
“Where are my sons?”
“Their father arrived about ten minutes ago to take them home.”
“That’s impossible. My husband works downtown. There’s no way he could have made it here so quickly.”
“With the power out, we don’t have access to the pickup list. But he presented proper I.D. He said he walked here to get them.”
“But his office is more than ten miles away.”
“In any case,” the teacher said, “they left only a few minutes ago. I’m sure you could catch them if you hurry. I bet they would be glad to see you’re okay. This has been quite a morning.”
“You can say that again.”
“Do you happen to know what’s going on, Mrs. Black? Only a few parents have come by to pick up their children and no one seems to know anything. But I saw that vehicle you drove here and wondered if maybe you might know something more?”
“I don’t know anything. I was working at a charity golf tournament when that thing appeared in the sky. I was driving a cart full of refreshments. When I realized no cars were working, I took the cart. For some reason it runs. It just doesn’t go very fast.”
“You’re very fortunate to have access to some kind of vehicle. I’m not sure what to do with all these children. A few of them have parents who both work downtown. It might take them all day to arrive, if at all.”