Car after car, helpless drivers stood beside them. Nearly every vehicle had bumped into the one in front of it at cruising speed. Hoods were crumpled, back lights shattered, windshields cracked. The result was one long continuous line of vehicular mayhem in both directions.
And everybody screamed or yelled at everyone else.
“Why didn’t you watch where you’re going?”
“No brakes! I couldn’t stop!”
“My brakes worked, but I have no power.”
“My horn wouldn’t even work!”
“Call your insurance company – if you can!”
“My neck!”
“My car!”
This tension added up. At one point, he came upon an eighteen wheeler which had jackknifed on the road, the driver having tried to stop, but couldn’t do it fast enough. He’d plowed through cars creating a wake of overturned vehicles, some on top of each other.
Two men were fighting amongst this carnage while others tried to stop them or looked on.
Nate paused to watch the circus, feeling his blood rise. He very much wanted to jump into the fray, show them how a beat-down is done properly. But after a few minutes he grew bored and continued on.
A pretty girl knelt under a tree next to an older man, maybe her father. The old coot clutched at his chest, gasping heavily.
She saw Nate as he walked by and waved frantically at him. “Can you help me, please!” He found her high pitched voice cute. He walked over.
The girl looked relieved. “Oh, thank God! No one will help us. I don’t know what it is. Do you know how to-,” she stopped talking when Nate leaned down and scooped a cell-phone from the old man’s lap.
Nate peered at its black screen, thumbing it.
“What are you doing?” the girl asked, confused and frantic. “My phone doesn’t work. No one’s does.”
“Figures,” Nate said, disappointed. He tossed the phone back onto the man’s lap and walked away, the girl too stunned to say more.
Nate took out his own dead phone, not expecting a change in its status. There wasn’t.
“Won’t be needing this anymore,” he said and threw it.
The phone ricocheted loudly off the passenger door of a souped-up red Camaro, chipping the paint and leaving a dent.
“Hey! What the hell!” screamed the driver who had been examining the damage to his hood. The front end was firmly wedged under the rear bumper of a landscaping truck.
The driver had to climb over his windshield to confront Nate.
Nate stopped and waited.
“You’re going to pay for that!” the driver screamed, waving at the dent.
Nate laughed, a deeply mocking sound. Something he practiced. “Your hood looks like that, but you get your panties in a twist over a little dent?” He sneered at the driver. “Got your priorities backwards, don’t you think?”
The driver, a younger man in his twenties had a lean muscular build. Nate could tell it was all for show and not for use. Doubted the guy could even throw a good punch.
The driver came right up to Nate and got in his face. “Who the hell do you think you are? You’re gonna pay for-.”
Nate’s arm shot out from his side, no telegraphing at all. His fist connected with the tip of the other man’s nose and kept on going, crunching cartilage.
The man’s angry screams became a yelp of pain. His head snapped back, and he stumbled, knees buckling, then fell to the concrete. Blood exploded from his mashed nose.
Nate stepped forward and kicked him in the stomach. The man folded into himself, keening in pain.
“Think I should pay for it?” he said, kicking the man again.
“Okay! Okay!” the man begged, trying to block the kicks with his legs and hands.
Nate kicked again. “Piece of shit Camaro. Why don’t you drive a real car?” He didn’t really mean that, but was too pissed off to care.
“Stop that!” someone shouted.
Nate looked up to find a small crowd of people gathering around. A fat wide-eyed woman held up her hands. “Stop hurting him!”
The back of Nate’s neck prickled and, in one fluid motion, instantly produced his pistol.
The crowd gasped in surprise.
With the silencer attachment, Nate realized that the pistol looked a little comical. He waved it at them.
“What’s a matter with you idiots?” he said, almost conversationally. “Never seen a good shit-kicking before?”
Wanting it to just end, the man on the ground said, “I’m sorry! Okay? I’m sorry!”
“What?” Nate asked, aiming at him.
The man’s eyes widened. Now he knew who he was really dealing with. Not some slob walking down the street, but an apex predator.
“Said I’m sorry,” the man said, tears streaming down his face. Whether he cried from the pain or for his life, Nate couldn’t tell.
Nate looked over the little group of frightened people. It felt strange standing before them like this without a mask on. It felt liberating. “Anyone got a working phone?” he asked.
Every head shook, no.
“Huh,” Nate said, then lowered the pistol and walked away, continuing south.
This is big, he thought as he sauntered along the side of the road. Whatever’s happened is bigger than he originally considered. How does someone turn everything off at once? Never mind turning things off – everything is effectively dead. Was it the Russians? Those crazy Koreans?
As he picked his way along the sidewalk, people spotted the pistol in his hand and gave him a wide birth. Nate didn’t notice, so lost in thought.
This has got to be an attack of some sort. Some sort of device. A death ray, or something. Or a thing that sucks up electricity or negates it. Then he stopped, hit with a thought. Nuclear? Was it a bomb?
He slowly spun around scanning the horizon. The black column of smoke from the plane crash mottled the sky to the south, but it was joined by other columns, most smaller. He counted six rising from different locations. Fires all over. He glanced at the crush of cars on the road. And no way for firefighters to get to them, even if their fire engines were still working, which he doubted.
But he didn’t see a mushroom cloud. If there was a nuclear attack, people would be really freaking out right now. Still, it didn’t mean a bomb hadn’t gone off nearby, or in space. He’d spent a lot of time surfing the internet and one of the factoids he learned was that nukes killed anything electrical.
He continued on, lost in thought, but slipped the pistol back in his pocket.
Vicky’s radio didn’t work. Cars weren’t moving, and planes – at least one he knew of – were crashing. Cops were going to have one hell of a day on their hands if this was city wide, which it was starting to shape up to be.
He arrived at an intersection which was densely packed with dead vehicles. There were more people here, most looked to be workers from a huge nearby office building. The sign outside the building made him pause. Pickering Office Tower.
Well, well, he thought. That was a name from the past. Not the building, but of one of its inhabitants.
Nate felt a strange mix of anger and excitement course through his body.
There is opportunity in chaos.
He walked toward the office tower. There were clusters of office geeks talking excitedly to each other and waving their cellphones around, trying to understand the situation.
Nate approached a trio of women, all wearing long tight skirts which he found appealing. “Hey, what’s going on?” he asked a pretty blonde.
The blonde was a little startled by his appearance. Nate didn’t look like he worked in a cubicle by any stretch of the imagination. “Uh, the power’s gone out. Can’t work.”
A brunette gave Nate the once over and liked what she saw. “Yeah, they might give us the rest of the day off.” Her eyes flashed at him.