The view of so many dead vehicles lined from horizon to horizon reminded Wyatt of those horror movies where the world was ending. People fleeing the city from malevolent aliens, or city crushing monsters, or invading armies. Only none of those scenarios were the case here, but Wyatt would welcome any one of them right now.
He was getting close to losing his temper. But he kept on pushing through. He had to.
Ethan jiggled in the cart, eyes half closed.
“You still with me, buddy?” Wyatt asked, as he wiped a thick sheen of sweat from his face.
“Yup,” Ethan said, perking up. “Not going anywhere you ain’t taking me.” He looked about at the cars and people they slowly cruised by. “Damn, someone really screwed up somewhere didn’t they?”
“How’s that?” Wyatt asked. He needed to keep Ethan awake and talking.
“Well, the way I see it maybe the government discovered something they shouldn’t have, and this is the end result.”
“Like a bomb?”
“Sure, a bomb, or a device or something meant to knock out the Russians. Only we got hit with it, instead. I mean, look around. Have you ever seen anything like this before in all your days? I sure haven’t.”
“I’m certain you’ve seen a lot considering you’re older than dirt. But no, I’ve never seen this before.”
Ethan thought for a moment. “Maybe the sun did it.”
“Okay, the blood loss is making you a little delusional. You’ve gone from bombs for Russians to the sun. Bit of a stretch?” Wyatt said, teasing.
Ethan shook his head, weakly. “Not at all. Can happen. Oh, hell, it has happened for all we know. Solar flares or sunspots or whatever. Could be that the sun burped and a big ass wave of radiation hit the Earth and knocked out everything electrical.”
Wyatt thought on this a few moments as he swerved the cart around a fat man who stood unmoving in the middle of the sidewalk.
As Wyatt gave the guy a dirty look, he said to Ethan, “Okay, that might make some sense. But I’ve never heard of this happening before, like ever.”
“Oh, it’s happened,” Ethan said as he tried to adjust his position. It wasn’t the most comfortable way to sit, especially if you’ve been stabbed. “Back in the eighteen-eighties or so a bunch of telegraph wires fried out. There wasn’t much electrical back then, but what little there was got sizzled.”
“Like sparks and stuff?”
“Yeah.”
Wyatt gazed up at the endless lines of wires which extended from the telephone poles along the road. “Doesn’t look fried to me. Everything looks the same, except for all these damned people and dead cars.”
“Yeah. I dunno about that. Maybe it wasn’t the sun. Just a theory.”
“But a good one. Better than my theory, by a long way.”
“You have a theory, do you Einstein?”
“Yup.”
“Well, enlighten me, please.”
Wyatt stopped. The tiredness seeped through his bones and joints.
Ethan frowned at him. “Whoa, junior. I think you’ve overexerted yourself. Take a break. Here, drink some water.”
Wyatt accepted the bottle and took a long swig. His chatting was masking the mounting frustration he felt. “Where is the God-damned clinic?”
He slowly spun around trying to make out all the signs for the different offices and strip malls around them. He’d been checking as they traveled, but nothing close to resembling a clinic presented itself.
Beside them a family sat in a minivan, its side door open. He could hear everyone complaining inside, bewildered at their situation. By this time, nearly everybody he’d seen had completely given up on their phones and took to interrogating the other stranded people closest to them. Have they heard anything? Did they know what was going on? When would help arrive?
With the moronic conversations, and the heat, and the need to get Ethan some help, the tension inside him was building up.
He was afraid it wouldn’t take much to make him blow.
“Yo, Einstein,” Ethan barked.
Wyatt snapped out his thoughts. “What? What is it?”
“Lost you there for a second. You were going to enlighten me?”
“Right, sorry,” Wyatt said, and handed the bottle back. He resumed pushing the cart. The beginning of the next block was a short distance ahead. Maybe the clinic was there. “My theory is this. I think God finally got fed up with how the world had gone and screwed itself and decided to do a reset.”
“A reset?”
“Yeah, what better way to get people to pull their heads out of their collective asses than to take away what was most important to them?”
“Electricity?”
Wyatt nodded. “Sure. But maybe it’s more than that. Take away all the electricity and what do you got left?”
“The mother of all traffic jams,” Ethan offered.
“Yup, that’s one thing. But what does that represent? It’s not just this traffic jam, but the fact that all the cars and buses and stuff no longer work. What happens when they never start up again?”
“A lot of people will have to walk to work,” Ethan said. “Would do them good. Hell, you and I do that every damned day!”
“Yeah, a lot of walking. But where would they be walking to? If they go to the office, and the computers and machines no longer even turn on, what do they do then?”
Ethan looked pensive. “Start dumpster diving?”
Wyatt laughed, something he hadn’t done for several long hours. “Well, they could, but where would those cans come from? Need machines to make the cans.”
“And trucks to deliver the cans to the store,” Ethan said. “Hell, they couldn’t even dig the aluminum from the ground to feed into their dead can-making machines.”
They passed a bus who’s passengers now loitered on the grass next to the sidewalk. Hardly anyone gave the two of them a look, so caught up in their own dilemma. Wyatt was used to being ignored all the time. But he found a strange satisfaction in seeing these people totally flummoxed to the point of being helpless. Now he was the one making progress, and they were to be ignored.
Ethan said, “So, no more cans for us?”
Wyatt shook his head. “I don’t know, partner. All I do know is if this doesn’t fix itself right quick, things are going to get like the Lord of the Flies.”
“Like a bunch of kids on an island?”
“Like no technology. What if one of these saps get mugged, how they going to call the police? What if there’s a murder? No cameras around, no phones, no nothing that would normally make someone think twice before committing a crime.”
This thought made Ethan look more pale. “Sheesh, now that is messed up, right there.”
“Okay, back to the cans in the store,” Wyatt said.
“Or not being there any longer.”
“But say there still is. How do you buy it?”
“Money.”
“Yeah, but what money? Everything is electronic. Pay from a debit card or credit card. Can’t do that without the juice flowing through those lines overhead. Now, you and I are old school. Everything is cold hard cash with us.”
“If we had any.”
“True, but I’ll bet that you and I have more hard currency on us than anyone on this street. They all got cards linked to their bank accounts, which is online. Or was.”
“Shit,” Ethan said, true realization dawning on him. As they passed more stranded people he looked at them with an odd expression.
“What are you thinking now?” Wyatt asked.
“I’m thinking these folks are absolutely screwed. Lord of the Flies is right. You nailed that bang on. But do you really think this will go on for much longer? Can’t someone fix this?”
Wyatt shrugged. “To be honest, I don’t really care. Right now I just need to get you some help. Electricity or no electricity.”