September 16th, 2:15pm
– Harry, Susan, Taylor, Ian, and Jared – Green Tree, PA
“Damn!” Harry
exclaimed as his phone connection went dead. He’d been in the middle of a
promising sales call, one that could’ve earned him a hefty bonus if he could’ve
just closed the deal. He could already see the dollar signs swirling around his
head, the commission already divided up and the Salesman of the Month plaque hanging
in his study next to the others. This was going to be the big sale that would’ve
gotten his kids’ cell phones upgraded, those Jimmy Choo heels his wife had been
drooling over, and a new scope for his AR-15. He slumped in his chair, the
dream cloud dissipating as he stared into the darkness in front of him.
Peering at his notes, he excitedly noticed
that he’d scribbled down her phone number. Using the flashlight on his phone,
he carefully made his way through the maze of cubicles towards his supervisor’s
desk, an increasing cacophony of cuss words and chatter filling the air with
each passing second. It wasn’t often that they enjoyed any free time between
calls, their headsets practically implanted onto their skulls. As much as they
appreciated any moment that they could talk to each other instead of having a
different customer cussing at them every few minutes, many of the call agents
shared the exasperation that Harry felt from missing their next sale.
“Angie, can I use my phone to call back this
client?” he asked desperately. “I was just about to finish the sale, and I just
know I could close it if I called back right now, before she changes her mind!”
His supervisor shook her head. “You know
company policy wouldn’t allow that. Besides—” she held up her phone, pointing
to the error message splayed across her screen, “—cell phones aren’t working
either.”
He huffed. “Well, what about a manual
telephone, one that doesn’t need to be plugged in for power? I can hook it up
to the phone line real quick and—“
Angie shook her head again, frowning. “We
don’t have any phones like that here, and even if we did, you wouldn’t be able
to log into the phone tree. I’m sorry, Harry, but you’ll just have to call them
back when the power comes on.”
He stood frozen for a moment, glaring at her
as he tried to come up with another solution. She’d already refocused on connecting
her cell phone to the internet, though, so Harry knew that the conversation was
over. He made his way back to his desk through the din, his shoulders slumped
with defeat.
Despite company policy, everyone in his quad
had their cell phones in front of them when he returned to his desk, their
faces glowing from their screens.
“Does your cell
phone work, Harry?” Suzanne asked, tapping hers insistently.
He shook his
head in response.
“My phone isn’t working, either,” another
coworker, Sarah, said as she roughly pressed the buttons on her flip phone. “I
can’t even get a text to go through.” Across the wall, a few other people
voiced their frustration at their lack of cell phone functionality.
Harry turned off the flashlight app and tried
to text his wife as well as sign in on his social media account, but neither
option worked. “That’s weird,” he muttered.
“Do you think that they’ll let us go home?”
someone asked excitedly.
Suzanne scoffed. “There’s no way they’ll
remove the shackles unless they absolutely have to. Our luck, the lights would
come on and we’d have to make a break for it before they made us come back in
and make up our downtime!”
Harry chuckled, but a part of him felt uneasy.
He’d experienced plenty of power outages before, but it was odd that his cell
phone also wouldn’t work. He began to wonder if he could call out on a regular
landline. His mind flitted to an image of his family, and he wondered how they
were faring—if they had electricity or if they were in the dark like him.
* * *
3:30pm – Ambridge, PA
It’d been dark
for over an hour, and Susan still had no means of communicating with her
family. The phone lines and cells in her office weren’t working, and people
were starting to worry. From her office window she had seen cars driving by, so
she wasn’t too concerned about her family; they’d all discussed what to do in
the event of an emergency, where their rally point would be if their house
wasn’t accessible, and so on. Still, her gut churned as she wondered how her
kids and husband were doing.
“Susan,” her boss called, peeking his head
into her office. “Since the power’s been out for over an hour, we’re sending
everyone home. Take your laptop; if you have power at home or if it comes back
on a little later, you can work from home for a few hours so you don’t have to
worry about as much make up time.”
Susan nodded. “Sounds good, Jeff,” she said as
she packed up her things. “I’d really like to get Jared out of daycare, since
he still has a problem with the dark.”
Jeff smiled. “He’s only 4. My little guy was
still afraid of the dark back then, too.”
“Oh I know, and Jared’s much better than he
used to be. At least he doesn’t wake up screaming anymore.” She stood from her
desk, car keys in hand. “I’ll see you tomorrow, Jeff!”
“Take care, Susan,” he said. “Hopefully this
power outage doesn’t last a whole lot longer!”
Once Susan got to the parking lot, she hurried
to her car and drove a little faster than normal on the way to her youngest
son. She worried that Jared was screaming in the middle of the playroom at his
daycare. He’d made a lot of progress over the past couple months, but this
sudden darkness may have undone a bit of that. She started thinking of ways to
help him calm down, loading his favorite music into the CD player in
preparation for his arrival; the cheerful, silly songs always made him giggle
even in his crankiest moments. She turned it off for the time being, though,
enjoying the temporary silence. While the CD contained his favorite collection
of songs, hearing the syrupy-sweet vocals over and over sometimes made her want
to “lose” the CD.
Traffic was heavier than it usually was,
especially before rush hour usually began. Susan figured that she wasn’t the
only one who got sent home early for the day thanks to the power outage,
especially since it seemed that the whole town was affected. She’d tried
calling Harry to let him know that she left work early and was picking up
Jared, but her phone would still not let her place a call or send a text.
As she checked
the time, she realized that her older kids would be out of school shortly.
Thankfully the high school and elementary school were on the same street; her 16-year-old
daughter, Taylor, would meet her 8-year-old brother, Ian, and walk the few
blocks back to their house together. Susan’s office was in the next town over,
and Jared’s daycare was about halfway between her workplace and their home, so her
kids wouldn’t be alone for very long—as long as the traffic didn’t impede her
travel time too much.
Susan sighed with relief as she saw the
generators at the daycare were working. Jared was sitting quietly at the table
coloring with the few other kids that were still there. Her concern dissipated
as she saw him look over, a big smile lighting his face. “MOMMY!” he exclaimed,
running over to hug her legs.
“Hello, sweetheart,” she said as she ruffled
his hair. “Mommy got out of work early today, so we’re going to go home, okay?”
“Can I finish my coloring, mommy?” he asked.
“I’m almost done.”
Susan smiled. “Sure, honey, hurry up. I’m
going to talk to Miss Jean for a moment.” He galloped back over to the table,
plopping down and gripping his crayon.
“Hey there, Jeanie,” she greeted. “How did
Jared do with the blackout?”
“Hi Susan! He was startled, that’s for sure,
but the generators kicked on within a few seconds. He seemed to forget the
power went off after a few moments and went back to coloring.”
“Oh good!” Susan said. “Say, have you had
issues at all with your cell phone? I’ve been trying to call Harry and haven’t
been able to get through.”
Jean shook her head. “No, unfortunately mine
hasn’t worked, either. The landline wasn’t, either. Maybe the circuits are
overloaded?”
“Could be,” Susan agreed.
“All done, mommy!” Jared announced, his coloring
sheet in hand as he bounded over.
“It looks amazing, honey!” Susan retrieved the
piece of paper from him. “We’ll hang this on the fridge as soon as we get home,
okay?”
Jared nodded in
reply then did his excited dance, looking like a living bobble head as he
bounced in place, and Susan’s heart melted with happiness and love as she
watched him.
“I wish I could
bottle his energy,” Jeanie said with a laugh.
“Oh believe me,
I wish I could, too,” Susan agreed as she bent down to hold Jared’s hand. “Well,
Jeanie, I’ll see you bright and early tomorrow morning, okay? Let’s go home,
Jared.” She guided him outside as he continued to shuffle excitedly.
“See you, Susan!” Jeanie said, waving as they
exited the building.
After securing Jared in his car seat, Susan pulled
out of the parking lot. “Do you want to listen to your music, honey?”
“Yes, please!” he answered excitedly.
The stereo defaulted to the radio as she
turned it on, and she noticed that the broadcast was a static-laden female
voice reading a news report about the blackout. Susan listened to the message,
a chill going up her spine as she realized the severity of the broadcast. She
looked back at her son, concerned about the welfare of her children.
“Music, mommy! Music!” Jared demanded as he
noticed her glancing at him in the rearview mirror.
She shook the fog out of her head. “Yes, of
course, honey, I’m sorry,” she muttered as she switched the stereo to the CD
player. Her hands were like ice, and her heart was pounding as she willed all
traffic to get out of the way so she could get home safely.
By the time she pulled into her driveway, she
was shaking. She clumsily grabbed her purse and got Jared into the house. Her
older children were sitting on the couch playing handheld video games, and they
audibly grunted a greeting at her as she and Jared walked past the living room.
It would annoy her any other day; she tried so hard to make them concentrate to
the real world and not get so lost in a fake one. For the moment, though, she
was glad that they had a few more moments before having to face reality.
“Taylor, Ian, did the power go out at school
today?” she inquired.
“Yeah, it went out around two,” Taylor
responded.
“They just had us read our text books the rest
of the day,” Ian added.
Susan was silent for a moment. Her daughter
and son must have sensed her tension, because they put the video games on
pause.
“Have your cell
phones worked at all?” she asked as they stared back at her with confused
faces.
Taylor and Ian shook their heads. “I tried
calling you when we got home, but the power was out here, too,” Taylor replied.
“I wasn’t able to text you, either.”
Susan sighed, lines of worry crossing her
face.
Taylor set her console on the couch. “Mom,
what’s wrong?”
“Do you guys know those special backpacks we
all packed together a few months ago? The ones in the back of your closet with
all of the supplies in them?” They shook their heads in recognition. “Go get
them. Jared’s too. And get those empty bins out of the basement. We’re going on
a trip once your father gets home.”
* * *
3:45pm – Green Tree,
PA
Harry was desperately trying to keep his eyes
open. The main hall’s emergency lights provided the only illumination on his
floor, and it wasn’t enough to prevent his drowsiness. The noise had died down
as people got over the initial shock of the power going off, and they mostly
sat at their desks staring into space or quietly chatting to their neighbors. A
few people had ventured out to the lobby and brought back some magazines to
read while others dragged out books they reserved for reading on their morning
bus commute, using their cell phones to provide enough light to see the pages.
He heard static
from a few rows away. Someone had tried the radio again. For the longest time
the only broadcast had been the National Weather Service reporting the chance
of power outages as a result of the storm that hit last night, so a lot of
people had given up and switched to listening to their music players on
headphones or portable speakers. This time, though, he could hear a female
voice talking. A few words made his ears perk up, and he went over to the cube
playing the radio. He noticed the confusion and fright on their faces as he
approached, and his stomach twinged with worry as he thought of his wife and
children. It only took a few sentences of the report for him to rush back to
his desk, grab his things—including all of the snacks and lunches that he had
in his desk—and hurry to his supervisor’s desk.
“Angie, I gotta go,” he announced. “I gotta
make sure my kids are okay.”
“You can’t go yet, Harry,” she replied
sternly. “We’re not letting anyone go yet, and you still have three hours
left—“
“Write me up for it,” he replied
apathetically. “I have to leave now.” He ran down to his car and spun out of
the lot with a screech, hoping that everyone else had made it home safely by
now.
