The Switch (2 page)

He looked to his right and
then to his left. Some people were getting into cabs stopped at the curb and in
the middle of the street even though no vehicles were moving. A couple of the
cabbies were standing in front of their cabs with the hoods open.

Options, options, options,
think John, what are your options here? Stay here and wait for a flight home?
No way, the airport won’t open for days at best. With crashes everywhere there
is no way this ol’ boy is getting on a plane. That was scary! Rent a car,
quick, get there before the rest of the mob realizes it is about the only
option and all the cars are rented.”

He turned and trotted down
the stairs to the nearest car rental, Budget.  There was already a small mob
around all of the car rental booths. He moved close enough to hear the not so
polite Budget associates telling people that until the power came back on they
could not rent any cars.  Their computers were not working and there was no way
they could arrange the rentals.

One irate customer shouted
out, “If you don’t get me a car now, I will come across that counter and take
the car keys myself”. The Budget associate pointed his finger at the man and
threatened to call the police. It was obvious that there would be no progress
here.

John went back outside and none
of the cars, buses, vans or other vehicles still had not moved. Many more now
had their hoods open and men were pointing at the engines and giving advice. All
vehicles were at a standstill.

He watched for a few seconds
and realized the reason the vehicles were not moving was not due to a traffic
jam. Every engine had stopped running. It would not have done any good to rent
a car anyhow, unless he wanted to push it to Alabama.

Again, he found himself
pushing himself for solutions and talking to himself. “Think damn it, think.
There has to be some options”.

Just about then he heard a
voice hollering “John, hold up, Johnny Appleseed, wait up” There was only one person
that called him Johnny Appleseed, it was smart ass Steve. They met and stepped
behind a concrete wall to find a quiet place to talk.

“Steve, what the hell is
happening here? Did you see what happened?”

Steve replied, “All I know is
the power went out and I saw a plane splatter in the middle of the runway. It
looks like all power is out”.

“Yea, even the cars are dead
in their tracks. Have you looked up at the sky? I’ve never seen anything like it.”

As Steve looked up and saw
the lightening he laughed. “It looks kinda like the fire from the bosses eyes
when you piss him off, doesn’t it?”

“How in the hell can you make
jokes at a time like this, people just died, hundreds of them.”

“Well, I guess this is a bad
situation. It looks like a Mad Max movie. We could be stuck here for weeks.”

John shook his head, “Not me,
I have always hated this town, I hate it even more now, I have to find a way
out of here.”

“What are you going to do,
walk home to Alabama?  If you decide to walk, be sure to take your shoes off so
you will feel like a true southern red neck.”

“Right, if I have to walk I
will. What do you want to do, stay here in the airport and sleep on the floor
for a week waiting for them to straighten this mess out? Not me, I’m going
home.”

“It is going to be a long
walk carrying a ten pound laptop and your dirty underwear, especially wearing
dress shoes. What do you think it will take, maybe two or three months to get
there? Shit, at your age you could be dead from old age before you reach Kentucky.”

“Thanks a lot pal. I
appreciate your support. I know it is a long way, but I’ve never been a person
like you, one who sits back and waits for something to happen, I have to take
some kind of action.”

Steve grinned, rubbed his
face with both palms and said, “Well, let’s think about this, we need to plan a
few moves. I don’t think I want to walk home to Oregon, but I do think we need
to get away from this airport. If this outage lasts for very long, it could get
real hungry out here, real fast! I suggest we go look for a place to stay that
is near a place with food.”

“I agree, but whatever we do
we need to move fast before this mob of people gets the same idea. The first
thing we should do is find a locker and dump these laptops. They will be
useless for a while, no sense carrying them with us.”

Steve slapped John’s
shoulder, “Good thinking, let’s go find a locker.”

They went back into the
terminal and located a section of lockers. They found one large enough for both
their laptops. They placed their computers inside and John asked Steve if he
wanted to be the keeper of the key.

Steve responded, “No, you
keep it, let the boss blame you if they get stolen”.

John said, “Now where, a
motel, a grocery store?”

“Well, I think we need to
walk around outside and see if any of the police or any of the cabbies know
what has happened. We need to get some idea how long this outage might last.”

When they got back outside
they wandered through the crowd and listened to the conversations. They
wandered several feet apart and heard all sorts of speculation; nuclear
explosion, earthquake, and even the arrival of aliens.

Then Steve called out,
“Appleseed, come over here”.

As John neared, Steve pointed
to a man with long white hair. Steve whispered to John, “Listen to this guy, he
is even older than you, he may know what he is talking about”.

The man looked to be about
seventy, was wearing a wrinkled sport coat, blue jeans and tennis shoes. As he looked
upward towards the sky he was telling a police officer about the solar
explosions that scientists had been expecting. He was explaining that a scientist
in Germany had predicted back in January that a major solar explosion was
possible and that it could be large and powerful enough that it could boil the
water in the oceans of earth. He went on to say that most other scientists had
agreed that solar storms would happen, but would be nothing more than usual. 

John interrupted the man,
“How long do you think this will last?” The old man turned to John and studied
his face for several seconds, then said “I’m not sure, but my bet is it will be
here for longer than you and I will live, thirty years, it could be permanent.”

Steve jumped in, “What, we
won’t have electricity for thirty years, maybe never, tell me you are joking.”

The old man stared at Steve
who was staring back with his mouth partially open, “Son, I am as serious as a
heart-attack, people are about to find out if they can survive the old
fashioned way, without electricity. Scientists have known for years that there
is unlimited energy in the sun. The Earth has experienced power failures caused
by solar storms and flares many times in the past. You can’t imagine the power
of the sun.”

As he again looked up at the
sky, he continued, “This particular solar storm is a big one, it has done some
serious damage, and it could be it is big enough to end life as you and I know
it”. This one is called a CMJ, a Corona Mass Ejection.”

The man looked skyward again,
“Son, this is the time for people to see what they are made of, it is probably
a time of survival.”

Steve turned to John and
said, “I don’t believe this is happening.”

“Believe it, I do. I am on my
way out of here, you coming? I am going to Sears to shop.”

“What are you going to do, shop?”

“Yes, I’m telling you I am
headed for home, it is a long way, and I will need a few things. I am going to
Sears.”

“It’s miles to the nearest
mall and Sears. Why not just to Walmart? We will probably have to pass three Walmarts
to get to a Sears store.”

With a disgusted tone John
said, “Steve, there is no electricity, do you really think any Walmarts will be
open for business?”

Steve heard the tone and
tried to imitate it back to him, “John, there is no electricity, do you really
think any Sears will be open for business?”

John smiled and shook his
head. “We are both Regional Asset Protection Managers for Sears. You know as
well as I do that when there is a power failure someone will stay in the store,
probably the store Asset Protection Manager. I think I will be able to convince
that person to let us in.”

As the sun dimmed, the
lightening became more distinct. It provided enough light for them to walk the
exit roads of the airport and then onto the interstate highway. They found the
roadway packed with stalled cars and people waiting beside the vehicles.

They pulled their luggage
behind them as they walked among the cars. After walking only about a quarter
of a mile, Steve stopped and opened the top of his luggage and began removing
folders of papers and three notebooks of materials handed out at the week’s
meetings. He dumped them on the ground and closed his luggage.

He said “I am not going to
drag that junk around with me”.

John looked down, slowly
picked up a thick green binder and tossed it to Steve. You better save this
one, or at least see if there is a chapter in it for solar storms. Steve knew
the green binder was the company’s manual for emergency procedures. He opened
it up, acted as if he was searching through a few pages, and read aloud, “In
the event of solar storm, hike down the interstate until your ass is raw.”

He smiled and threw the
binder into the weeds beside the road. “Fuck it”, he said.

The highway looked like a
parking lot. Every car apparently stopped the instant the storm hit. It looked like
a still photograph of a busy highway. There were cars in every lane, all
stopped dead!

There were people standing
outside their cars talking and looking up at the lightening. Some people were
sitting in their vehicles, many appeared frightened and confused. One thing
John noticed is that not many people were walking away or abandoning their
cars. He wondered how long they might wait by their cars. Would they stay for
an hour? All night? A week? How long will it take for the electricity to come
back on?

“Steve, if the electricity
never comes back on, how long do you think it will take these cars to rust away
to nothing? Do you think they will be here forever? Do you think the highway
will ever be over-grown with weeds?”

Steve was silent for several
seconds then replied that the cars would probably be there forever and added,
“There are going to be a lot of changes coming, some most people won’t like it.”

“Think about how people will
eat? The food will last only so long, especially here in the city. By midnight
the grocery stores will be empty. The ones that won’t figure out a way to stay
open to sell their food will get looted. The cops won’t be able to stop anyone.
They don’t have any cars either, or radios.”

As they hiked along they
could smell a strong odor of smoke or electrical wiring burning. Each power
pole transformer looked to be melted. Some had large cracks in the metal case.
The sides were singed and most seemed to have had the tops blown off.  John
looked at the transformers and commented that it will take months to fix those
things.

“Hell, Appleseed, they won’t
even be able to find new transformers for months after the juice comes back on,
and the juice won’t come back on until they get more transformers. It makes you
think of the chicken and the egg. What comes first, the transformers or the
electricity?”

Chapter 4

The lightening had been
continuous for nearly four hours. Both Steve and John were in agreement that it
looked more like static electricity than lightening, It was well past what
should have been dark, but because of the lightening or static electricity, the
sky was providing plenty of light for walking.

Steve had just asked John for
an estimate on about how far he thought they had walked. But before John could
give his guess of about ten to twelve miles, Steve pointed to the east and
said, “There’s a mall.”    

Down the hill and beyond the
fence of an access road they could barely make out the shape of a mall. They
wasted no time wading through the tall grass to reach the chain link fence.
They threw their luggage over the top and climbed the fence by wedging the tips
of their shoes into the gaps in the chain.  As Steve went over the top of the
fence his thigh caught on one of the twisted wire points which dug into his leg
as he fell to the ground.   When he hit the ground on the side of his head and
neck, John heard a loud pop.

He rushed to Steve’s side and
looked into his face. Steve was smiling, but also gritting his teeth in pain. 

“Are you ok?”

“I think so, I cut my leg and
hurt my shoulder. I think it is dislocated. I did it in high school.”

“You are about the most
awkward person I have ever met. How in the hell can you fall over a fence?”

“Help me up and I will show
you how awkward I am you son-of-a-bitch.” He was trying to laugh but even in
the low light John could see he was in pain. John could also see that Steve’s
thigh was bleeding badly.

John said “Let’s get up there
to the parking lot and see if there is a Sears store here.”

As they walked across the lot
they had to weave their way through dozens of parked cars. There were people
milling about and talking. They saw some asleep on the hoods and some inside
cars. To some extent, there seemed to be a party atmosphere.

As they walked near a group
of about four teenage boys and six girls, one of the girls observed that Steve
was limping and then saw the blood on his leg. She asked him what happened.

Steve said “I was jumped by
an alien a mile or so down the road, and the little bastard bit me on the leg
before I broke his neck.” 

“What?” She screamed!

Steve did his best not to
smile. “It’s ok, they aren’t very big. They are really fast and quick though.”  Steve
considered himself an artist at telling lies to young girls. He was not going
to let this opportunity escape.

“Have you kids seen any of
them? They are little purple critters, they have short skinny legs and heads as
big as beach balls.” Steve quickly turned his head back over his shoulder and
shouted, “Look out, here they come now!”

The kids turned to run and
one of the girls tripped and fell to the ground. The others ran past her
without slowing to help her.

“Jesus Steve, someone is
going to get hurt if you keep up your crap, knock it off.” John helped the girl
from the ground and explained to her that Steve cut his leg climbing a fence,
not fighting aliens. The girl was crying but she turned to Steve and spit into
his face before walking towards her fleeing friends.

As she walked away Steve
shouted, “Can we exchange some more body fluids later?”

She ignored his remark and
ran to catch up with her friends.

“Come on Steve, I think I can
see a Sears sign there on the corner of the mall.”

As they neared the corner of
the mall it became clear that there was in fact a Sears store there. They walked
up to one of the glass doors, put their heads to the glass and tried to see
inside. They could see nothing, everything was dark inside the store.

“Steve, let’s go around the
corner to the Merchandise Pick-up door. Sometimes they have a buzzer or doorbell
there for employees coming to work early in the mornings.”

As they walked around the
corner of the building John could see a trail of blood being left on the
sidewalk from the wound on Steve’s leg. The amount of blood on the sidewalk
indicated he had a deep cut.

They walked up to the doors
under the Merchandise Pick-up sign and again looked inside. John knocked on the
door several times but no one came to the door. Steve located a doorbell button
on the wall beside the door and pushed it in, and held it in. Neither could
hear an internal bell. 

John asked, “Why do you think
an electric door bell will work?”

He knew that when Steve did
not laugh at their poor judgment or make any kind of sarcastic remark, that he
was hurting. Steve always had a smart comment. But not this time, he was hurt
for sure.

He looked at Steve leaning
against the brick wall holding his head down and his eyes closed. He turned to
the glass door and beat it as hard as he could in an effort to gain the
attention of anyone inside. He then turned towards the parking lot and looked
for a rock or anything else he thought was strong enough to break the door
glass. He knew he had to find a first aid kit quickly or Steve could be in
serious trouble. There was nothing within sight that could be used to break the
glass so he walked towards the elevated receiving dock. As he crossed the dock
he heard Steve yell out, “Appleseed, someone is here at the door.”

John ran to the door to see a
young man and woman standing inside. Steve was telling them through the glass
that they were Regional Asset Protection Managers for Sears, and they needed
help.

The man inside told Steve to
show his identification, both Steve and John pulled their ID cards from their
wallets and held them to the glass for the man to see. John doubted the young
man could read the ID in such low light but he did it anyhow. The only light
was from the continuous lightening.

The man asked them what they
wanted. John told them that they were at the airport when the electricity failed
and about Steve’s injury. Both the man and woman bent lower to look at Steve’s
leg. 

Again the man asked what they
wanted.

John looked him straight in
the face as he moved his face to about one inch from the glass and said, “We
need to come inside, wash his wound and get to your first aid kit. He is
bleeding to death.”

The young man said, “I am
sorry, but we’re not allowed to let anyone in this building. The store manager
told us not to let anyone in.”

John asked, “What’s your
name?

“Kale.”

John asked, “What is your job
here with Sears?”

Kale replied, “Asset
Protection Manager”.

John then said in a calm yet
very firm voice, “Listen to what I am about to say, Kale because I am serious
as hell. I will tell you again that I am a Regional Asset Protection Manager. I
am not here to steal anything. I appreciate your dedication to protecting this
building, but unless you open this door right now, I am going to grab the
refrigerator dolly someone left on the dock and I am going to throw it through
this glass. I know you have no way of calling the Police, but even if you
could, I will still come through this door. This fellow Sears salaried manager
needs help and needs help now. So I suggest you either open this door or stand
back so you don’t get hurt!”

The woman who had been
standing silent behind Kale spoke up and told Kale to open the door. He looked
her way, hesitated a few seconds, and then pulled his keys from his pocket and
opened the door.  The woman introduced herself as Linda, the women’s department
manager. She told them to follow her to the men’s room.

They walked down the dark
hall to the restrooms. She told Kale to go get the first aid kit. Kale made a
huffing noise as he turned and walked away. He mumbled something about it was
her ass if Mr. Dean found out.

Linda looked at Steve and
John. “How would you like to have to work with a jerk like that every day for
six years?”

John asked, “Who is Mr. Dean,
the Store Manager?”

Linda replied “Yes, he is new
and he is really arrogant, he thinks he is GOD.  When the power failed, he gave
Kale and I instructions to stay until the power came back on and he left. He
was the first person to leave the building. He lives about four or five miles
from here, so he was able to walk home. Kale is afraid he will come back
tonight to check up on us.”

John asked, “How long do you
two plan to stay here?”

Before she could respond he
said, “While Steve and I were still at the airport, we were told by someone who
seemed to know what they were talking about, that power is going to be off a
long time, maybe forever.”

“Oh no, I hope you are wrong,
I can’t miss work, I have bills to pay.”

Steve spoke up, “If there is
no electricity there won’t be any bills to pay. There won’t be any way to pay
them. No one will care. People need to think about survival, not paying bills.”

John interrupted, “Linda, do
you sell candles here?”

“Yes, we have a ton of them.”

“Good, why don’t you go get a
few? We will need the light to dress Steve’s leg.”

She left to get the candles. 
                          

John walked a few feet to the
Optical Department and pulled a chair from a desk. He pushed it beside Steve,
who was now sitting on the hard floor. The blood was still flowing from his
leg.

Kale returned with the first
aid kit at the same time Linda returned. She was pushing a cart with eight
large burning candles.

The candles provided plenty
of light for inspection of Steve’s leg. The cut was about ten inches long and
deep. The blood was flowing but not spurting. John took the first aid kit from
Kale and said, “Thanks, now go get us some ice.”

Kale did not say a word, he
just turned and left.

Linda opened the first aid
kit and found some antiseptic. She cleaned the cut and placed a gauze pad
against the cut and pressed hard with the palm of her hand. She told John to
get the scissors from the kit and cut Steve’s pant leg off so she could wrap
some tape around his leg. 

He used the kit’s scissors
and cut up the outside of Steve’s pant leg. Then he started to cut the pants
around Steve’s thigh.

He told Steve, “Hold still, I
don’t want to accidently cut Little Ed.”

Steve said, “I don’t know who
Little Ed is, but if you cut the Titanic, you are dead meat”.

Linda laughed and told Steve to
shut up so she could hold pressure on his leg. She laughed so hard she got the
hiccups which started both Steve and John laughing. When Kale returned with the
ice all three were laughing as if at a comedy show.

Kale did not ask what was so
funny, he just handed the bag of ice to John, turned and walked back into the
dark store.

After several minutes, the
laughter faded away. Linda was now holding the ice on Steve’s leg and the blood
flow was slowing. The pressure and the ice were apparently clotting the blood.

John turned to Linda, “Let me
tell you what I want to do. I am going to spend the night here in the store. I
am going to give you my Sears Charge Card number, and my associate number. I am
going to gather up some things from the sales floor and write the stock numbers
on a sales ticket for you.  When, or if the power comes back on, you can ring
the stuff that I take, onto my account. If Mr. Dean gives you any trouble, I
promise I will not let him take any kind of action against you or Kale for
letting us in or for taking the merchandise. I am planning on getting home to
Alabama in any way I can. I am going to start the trip on a bicycle from this
store. Do you have any objections so far?”