Wandering Highway Read online

  Allan tried to look past the crowd to see what was going on outside but he couldn’t make anything out.

  “I don’t know. It looked like the sky was clearing up when we got out of the truck.” He replied.

  “Didn’t you just hear that thunder outside?” Jennifer asked.

  “I heard something, but it didn’t sound like thunder to me. It sounded like an explo…” Realizing that he was speaking in the middle a large crowed Allan lowered his voice to a whisper and he leaned down to Jennifer so that only she could hear him, “… it sounded like an explosion to me.”

  Jennifer nudged him in the arm, “Stop trying to scare me.” She said but Allan did not reply.

  When they finally made it to the glass doors of the mall exit they looked up at the sky and found that it was just as it had appeared ten minutes earlier when they had first went into the mall. There were dark clouds overhead but it wasn’t raining and there was certainly nothing severe enough to explain the loud boom that everyone heard from inside the mall.

  “Maybe that sound was one of the generators trying to come back on?” Allan said, trying to explain the situation in his mind.

  A large jumbo jet was seen floating above them in the sky as it made its descent towards the DFW airport, but something was different about this airplane. It was closer to the ground than all the other planes from earlier, only a few hundred feet in the air.

  “That’s weird.” A short man with large glasses on his face was talking to a woman beside him, “That airplane isn’t making any sound.” The man said.

  Allan looked back up to the sky. Surely the man is mistaken. There has to be noise coming from an airplane that’s so close. Allan thought but to his horror there was no sound at all coming from the airplane’s jet engines. Suddenly the large jet’s wings tilted hard to the left and the front of the airplane veered straight down. As the nose of the plane dipped further downward the crowd that was pouring out of the mall let out a collective gasp. Jennifer buried her face against Allan’s side as the airplane exploded into the ground beside highway 635. A huge fireball erupted into the sky and screams around them of “Oh my God!” filled the air. Thick black smoke billowed from the fireball upwards into the sky. Hundreds of cars had stopped on the highway, first hand witnesses to the explosion. For a brief moment Allan thought he saw just before the explosion, that the cars had already stopped on the highway before the airplane crashed. He even thought he saw people standing outside of their cars in the middle of the road. Why would people be out of their cars before the airplane even crashed? He wondered to himself.

  Another explosion erupted out of sight behind the mall. They didn’t have to see the fireball this time to know what it was.

  “The planes are dropping out of the sky!” A woman next to Allan screamed.

  “Someone call 911, my phone isn’t working!” Yelled another voice in the crowd.

  Nearly all the people in the crowd reached down into their pockets and purses in unison to retrieve their cell phones. Allan pulled his cell phone that he kept tucked in the front pocket of his dress shirt. Jennifer had always teased him about keeping his phone inside his shirt pocket. “One day I’m going to buy you a pocket protector you big nerd.” She would always tease. He pulled the phone out of its leather case, a Blackberry which always made Jennifer’s nerd jokes that much worse. He pushed the red power button to turn it on his phone did not respond.

  That’s weird. It should have come right on when I pulled it out of the case but pushing the power button doesn’t even turn it on. He thought as he turned his phone around and pried his fingernail under the battery release latch on the back of the phone.

  “My phone’s dead!” Someone else yelled.

  “Mine’s dead too.” Another confirmed.

  The pandemonium in the crowd began to intensify as the panicked voices began to turn into cries and screams of terror.

  Allan detached the battery from his phone, quickly reassembled it, and turned it over and pushed the power button again.

  Nothing.

  Allan pushed the red power button on his phone harder.

  Nothing.

  Maybe from the shock of the airplane crash I forgot how to turn on my phone and I’m just pushing the wrong button. He questioned himself and pushed the green talk button instead.

  Nothing.

  He began to feel panic well up inside him and he slid his thumb across all of the keys on the Blackberry keyboard, but it still did not respond. “My phone is dead too.” He admitted to Jennifer as he slid the useless device back into its leather holster and dropped it back into his shirt pocket.

  Beside him Allan saw a man lift his phone to his face to apparently smell it. The man turned to a lady standing beside him. “Smell your phone honey. Does yours smell funny?”

  Curious, Allan pulled his phone back out of his pocket and lifted it up to his nose and he breathed in the odor of burnt electronics. The smell brought him back to when he was a kid when his dad would burn trash on their property out in the country in order to save money from having to pay for a trash pickup service. One time his dad threw an old VCR tape player on the fire and he remembered his dad telling him, “It’s cheaper to buy a new one now days than it is to fix it.” Allan remembered standing there watching the plastic components of the VCR melt into the fire and as it popped and sizzled in the heat it gave off colorful green and blue flames. He remembered the wind created by the fire blowing the thick black smoke into his face. He wasn’t aware of how toxic the fumes of the burning electronics were at the time and he breathed in the distinct smell of the hot plastic. It was the same smell that was coming from inside his cell phone now.

  Jennifer looked up at him, “My phone isn’t working either.” She reported. Allan took her phone from her and held it up to his nose. It had the same burnt electronics smell as well.

  Chapter 3: Catastrophe Abounds

  “What’s happening?” A woman shrieked nearby and she began to frantically push her way through the crowd. The woman’s panic set off a chain reaction amongst the people standing around them and everyone began to push and shove one another. Word had spread to the remaining people inside the mall and the doors were now bursting with hysterical people desperately trying to get out. A teenager in front of them pushed a large man that was in his way, toppling him over to the ground. No one tried to help the man get up and instead just kept running around him and as more people ran out of the mall they began to trample him. Allan grabbed Jennifer and held her close, trying to shield her and their unborn baby from the commotion happening all around them.

  They made their way toward the safety of their truck and Allan was thankful that they were able to park as close to the mall as they did. As they got closer to the truck Allan fumbled around in his pocket for his keys. People were running past them, screaming hysterically, and Allan found himself shaking so much from the terror going on around that he had a hard time just getting his keys out of his pocket. Upon seeing her shaken husband Jennifer reached over and helped him get the keys untangled from of his pocket. She pushed the door unlock button with her thumb and they both watched the truck expecting all the lights to flash to indicate that the doors had unlocked, but the lights never came on. She pushed the door unlock button again, harder this time, and pointed the keyless remote directly towards the truck but the doors would not unlock.

  “Let me see it.” Allan said, taking the keys from her. He pushed the unlock button several times but received the same results.

  “Where’s your manual door key?” Jennifer asked.

  Allan held the keychain up, looking for a door key to the truck when he suddenly realized that he had never used a manual door key since he bought the truck new the year before. The only thing that he had was the black keyless remote that had a weird looking end that went into the ignition and a button with an icon for unlocking the doors and another button to unlock them. “It doesn’t have one.” He replied.

  Jennifer look
ed at Allan dumbfounded. “That’s impossible.” She said as she looked over Allan’s keys with him. She looked back at the door handle on the truck and saw that there was indeed a keyhole in the door. She tried to insert the plastic end of the keyless remote control into the door but it was clearly too big to fit into the keyhole. “There has to be a key. It goes right here.” She pointed at the keyhole in the door.

  “Well then where’s the key for it?” Allan demanded in frustration.

  “When you bought the truck at the dealership, they didn’t give you a manual door key?” She asked.

  “This is the only thing that they gave me.” He replied pointing at the keyless remote.

  Jennifer examined the remote control again. At the bottom of the remote, near where it connected to the key ring there was a little plastic slide lever. Jennifer placed her thumb against the slider and as she slid it the rest of the keys on the keychain detached from the remote and fell to the ground.

  “There it is!” Jennifer exclaimed pointing at a long metal key that had slid out of the keyless remote. Allan reached down and picked it up, slid the metal key into the keyhole, and unlocked the truck door.

  “Why didn’t the dealership tell me about that little feature?” He asked as he opened the door. He looked around inside the truck. Usually when the doors were open the light in the headliner would come on, but this time the light remained dark. Please tell me the electronics in the truck aren’t fried too. He thought to himself. Jennifer stood behind him in the doorway of the truck and watched Allan slide up into the driver’s seat. He inserted the plastic key into the ignition and turned the switch but the truck did not respond. The engine did not turn over, there were no annoying sounds alerting him that the key was in the ignition with the driver’s door open, the gauges and lights on the console did not light up, and the radio did not come on. In a brief fit of denial Allan thought that maybe they were in the wrong truck, and he looked up at the parking sign in the front of the truck and read the words, Reserved For Expectant Mothers. This was his truck and it was dead just like everyone’s cell phones.

  He looked around the mall parking lot. The scene around them was chaotic. People were running up the aisles of parked cars, pushing one another and screaming. A couple of people had their hoods up and were looking down at their engine compartments. The ruins of the crashed plane still burned on the highway in the background and people nearby on the road were out of their cars, staring at the inferno in disbelief, many with their hands against their faces shielding themselves from the intense heat of the blaze.

  Allan reached down and pressed the automatic door lock button to unlock the passenger side door. There was no response and he immediately felt foolish for even trying. He reached over and pulled the door knob on the passenger door to unlock it. “Go to the other side and get in until we can figure out what to do.” He instructed. Jennifer walked around the front of the truck and Allan looked on, noticing how the way she walked lately had become more and more of a waddle like she had when she was in the late stages of her pregnancy with Samantha years ago.

  Jennifer stepped up into the truck, sat down and closed the door. “What do you think happened?” She asked.

  He was quiet for a moment as he watched the scene unfolding outside. "I don't know." He told her. In his mind he had a pretty good idea what was going on, but by telling his wife that he didn't know, somehow it made him feel better.

  "Do you think this is the same thing that they were talking about on the radio earlier? Do you think it’s happening here?" She asked. Allan looked at her and the look on his face confirmed that she had the correct answer.

  "From the way they described the situation in Europe," Allan paused as he considered the reality of what he was about to say, "we are experiencing the exact same thing here."

  There was another enormous blast outside and everyone in the parking lot instinctively ducked their heads down. Even Allan and Jennifer flinched inside the cab of the truck. Moments later they could see in the distance that another jumbo jet had fallen out of the sky and exploded into a big orange fireball. Everyone in the parking lot stopped where they were and watched the explosion until the fireball became just another stack of billowing black smoke and then, as if everyone had been given a signal, the panicked people in the parking went back to running around in a mass state of hysteria.

  In the reflection of his driver side mirror Allan saw a heavy set man walking up to the car parked beside them. He watched the man approach, lumbering heavily from side to side with each step and when he reached the car he put his hand on top of the roof to rest for a moment. The man opened his car door, sat down and put his key in the ignition but he received the same results as everyone else around him. He reached down and pulled the latch to pop the hood and then he rose up and began moving his massive body towards the front of the car. As he struggled with the hood latch Allan noticed that large beads of sweat had gathered on his forehead and the liquid had begun to drip down the man’s face. Allan thought how a man so out of shape probably couldn't walk a mile before giving out. It was in that moment that the seriousness of Allan’s own reality set in. If all of the vehicles around them were dead, that meant that everyone would soon be walking, everyone including Jennifer. Suddenly a sensation of fear entered Allan's mind as he realized that the reason why he was so fixated on the fat man was because the way that he walked was the same kind of waddle that Jennifer had.

  Walking.

  Its 70 miles from here to home. He thought. In the heat and humidity from all the rain showers Allan was unsure if even he, in what he considered pretty good shape, was even capable of walking such a distance, let alone his wife in the middle of an eight month pregnancy. His fear began to turn into panic. Allan knew that he needed to remain calm and in an effort to get his mind on other things he opened his truck door, leaned out and called to the fat man still struggling to open his hood, "Hey buddy, need a hand?"

  "I can't open this stupid thing!" The fat man exclaimed as he slammed a clenched fist onto the middle of the hood leaving behind a small fist sized dent in it.

  "Let me see if I can help." Allan offered. He stepped to the front of the car and the big man heaved himself out of the way so that Allan could work with the hood. Allan reached under and found the hood latch, pulled on it and raised the hood.

  "Oh I'm so stupid." The fat man announced.

  "It's alright. They can be tricky to open sometimes.”

  "Name's Walter." The man said as he stuck an overstuffed paw out at Allan.

  "I'm Allan and over there sitting in the truck is Jennifer." Allan replied and he shook Walter's hand and then Walter and Jennifer exchanged waves.

  "What do you think happened?" Walter asked.

  "I have no idea." Allan lied. He felt somewhat strange about behind dishonest. It was as if lying was the right thing to do, as if revealing too much information in the middle of such a crisis might be a bad thing. The last thing he wanted was to say the wrong thing and set off a bigger panic with big Walter leading the stampede. Allan chucked to himself at the absurdity of the thought.

  "What's so funny?" Walter asked.

  "Oh I'm just thinking how all of us have our hoods up but no one really knows what they're doing." Allan fibbed again and then he looked around the parking lot and saw perhaps 50 cars with their hoods up with men and women standing in front of them just talking to one another. No one was leaning down into the engine compartments actually working on anything.

  "We got the hood up, now what?" Allan asked.

  "Well, I suspect it’s the battery. The lights on the console aren't working, the engine won't turn over. Definitely the battery." Walter responded.

  "You think all of our batteries just went dead at the same time?" Allan asked, knowing it was impossible but he was somewhat hopeful that maybe Walter was right. Maybe it is just the batteries.

  "Well, I uh, I don't know." Walter said with uncertainty. "It was just a guess. What do you think i
s wrong?"

  Allan imagined himself telling Walter the news about the power outages and all the fried electronics across Europe, and how the reporters on the news channel were talking about the sun or some kind of weird bomb that could have caused all of this, and how everything that was happening in Europe seemed to be happening here. Allan imagined Walter, upon hearing all of this, charging through the parking lot leading the screaming panicked horde of hysterical mall shoppers around in terror. It was a silly thought but Allan decided it would be better to continue sheltering the big guy from all that horror.

  "Maybe you're right. Maybe it's just the battery." Allan walked over to his truck and grabbed a long screwdriver from the toolbox that he kept in the back.

  "Whatcha going to do with that?" Walter asked.

  "Well, when I touch both battery terminals with this screwdriver, if the battery is good then it will throw a spark. If the battery is dead then there won't be any spark." Allan replied as he leaned down over the battery compartment in the car.

  Walter leaned in, his voice lowered with seriousness, "So what we ought to be hoping for is no spark." Allan looked up at Walter and saw the intensity in his face and he realized that Walter knew what was going on all along. Walter knew that it was most likely not a sudden mass die off of all the car batteries around him and he understood that if the battery sparked to indicate that the battery was good then it meant that something far more serious was wrong with his car and everyone else’s around them. Allan nodded to Walter to confirm his suspicion and he touched the screwdriver to the battery terminals. Bright blue sparks flashed from the battery, blinding both of the men for a moment. The battery was just fine and the gravity of the situation was confirmed. Walter lowered his head and he walked back and sat down inside his car, demoralized.

  Jennifer slid out of the truck and joined her husband at front of the car.

  "Any luck?" She asked as she rubbed her stomach in the way that all expectant mothers do. Allan replied with only a look of hopelessness.