The Games

Then the screen went blank.

The lights in the anteroom shined bright and strong.

Then went out again. The city went dark.

On the floor, Evan’s body forgot itself, and his heart ceased beating. Evan and Pea were no more.

THE ENGINEERS in the control room jumped to their feet and cheered at their consoles. The screen on the far wall told the story. Phoenix was alive again. The boxes were all lit, representing eleven million fully functioning units. They’d won. Whatever had been sucking away the power had been cut off.

The supervisor, Brian, smiled broadly. He looked at Mr. Sure, who was also smiling. They had managed to shunt all the power away from that thirsty grid in the technical district outside of San Bernardino. Problem solved.

“What the hell do you think that was?” the supervisor said out loud to no one in particular. Already, it had moved into the past for him. His smile was straight and wide and relieved.

“I don’t know,” the technician answered.

As Brian looked at the gauges, his own smile began to fade.

The gauges were all normal, except for one. He glanced up at the cheering crowd and saw that nobody else had noticed. He considered not bothering, not saying anything. Let them cheer. Instead, he motioned to Mr. Sure, pointing to the console with his other hand.

Mr. Sure eyed the gauge. “What’s this?”

“The heat dump,” he said.

“I can see that. Why is it doing that?”

The dial continued its upward swing, climbing like the tachometer of the world’s most powerful muscle car. It climbed steadily through orange. The supervisor looked down at the men in the chamber. The cheering stopped as, one by one, they took notice of the small display in the far-right corner of the wall screen.

Whatever it was they thought they’d beaten had come back to strike a final blow. Mr. Sure thought of Chernobyl, Three Mile Island. Fukushima. Precautions had been taken. It could never happen again, that’s what they’d said. What they’d promised. This would be worse. The needle climbed toward red without slowing. Nuclear cascade.

“Why is this happening?” Mr. Sure’s voice was small, almost childlike. The supervisor sensed the question wasn’t directed to him but to God.

The needle slid into red. “Phoenix,” said the supervisor.

The explosion moved quickly, reducing the room to atoms before he could even register the pain.

THE LIGHTS came on in Baskov’s room, battering him awake through his eyelids. He’d never been able to sleep without total darkness, and this new light was an irritant.

Groaning, he looked at his watch: four-forty. The power was back on. He did the math. That meant the city had been without electricity for a grand total of nine hours. Ridiculous. Heads were going to roll, he was sure. He sat up and swung his feet to the floor, cursing himself for not having the foresight to make sure all the light switches were off before he went to bed.

His mouth tasted like cotton gauze, so he reached for the half-empty drink on the night table. It burned going down but settled into a nice warm glow in the pit of his stomach.

He’d met with the president and several other state heads earlier in the evening. It hadn’t gone well, and he’d retreated into his bottle afterward. There would be another meeting tomorrow.

He reached for the wall lamp above the nightstand and clicked it off. The room darkened somewhat, but the bathroom light spilled across the floor to his bed. He looked toward the bathroom, weighing his options before giving in to the inevitable and angrily throwing the covers off. The room was cold; without power, the heat had shut down. Phoenix might be a city in the desert, but at night a chill could still seep into the air.

He walked across the carpet, stepping onto the bathroom tile. He reached for the switch, but just before his fingers made contact, the light went out by itself.

He clicked the switch, anyway. Up, down—nothing happened. He left the switch in the down position and walked blindly back toward the bed, arms groping in front of him. He found the wall lamp, clicked, and nothing. The power was apparently out again after being on for only a few seconds.

“Like some damn third-world country,” he grumbled into the darkness.

A red glow in the window caught his eye. He turned, and the glow grew brighter. Curious, he walked to the sliding glass doors. He found the handle, slid the door open, and stepped outside into a warm breeze. His eyes widened.

He saw his death. A huge wall of fire rolled toward him from the east, engulfing the dark shapes of buildings and swallowing the city in its giant red maw.

He had time enough to hope it was a dream, and then the warm breeze turned into an oven blast that singed the hair from his body and let him know how awake he was. His skin burned. The red wave crested overhead, pushing a molten, hurricane wind before it.

He shielded his eyes and careened backward, crashing through the plate glass to the floor of his room. He writhed, screaming, on the smoking carpet as the blast slammed toward the building.

He looked to the light, and the heat made ashes of his eyes. The maw closed around him.

“TURN HERE.”

“Here?”

“Yeah, a left,” Ben said.

The taxi barely slowed as it took the corner wide, throwing Ben against his seatbelt. The cabbie had four minutes left on the deal they’d struck, and he was taking it personally. Inside the running wash of the taxi’s headlights, the road skipped by in a pattern of gray asphalt and yellow dashes. At this speed, the cabbie apparently thought the center of the road was the safest bet. The car’s headlights provided the only illumination as far as Ben could see. The power was still out, and the world flew by in darkness.

“Left at the next intersection,” Ben said.

“How far is that?”

“Should be coming up.”

The cabbie eased back slightly on the accelerator, checking his watch for the tenth time. Ben had already decided that the guy had earned the extra money, but he didn’t want to tell him that. The tires squealed as they rounded the turn.

The driver hit the gas and they roared along a high chain-link fence.

“Stop!” Ben shouted. He’d almost missed the opening.

The anti-locks mooed as the cab shuddered to a stop.

“Back up.”

The reverse gear whined, and the driver looked over his right shoulder. The car sped up, slowed, stopped.

“Through there.”

The cab pulled up to the gate. Ben craned his neck for the guard, but the gatehouse was dark. He rolled the window down and began reaching for the electronic pass from his wallet when he saw that somebody had already pushed the gate open enough to slide a car through.

They were here.

Ben smiled in the darkness of the backseat.

“Drive on through.”

“We’re not going to have any problems for this, are we? This looks like private property.”

“It’s actually publicly owned.”

“You mean government. That’s worse. I’ll just drop you here.”

“You’re getting the three C’s. Plus an extra fifty if you take me all the way.” It was one hell of a long driveway. He wasn’t in the mood to walk.

“You got it,” the cabbie answered, fast enough that Ben knew he’d been bluffing for more money.

The cab slunk through the gate with inches to spare on both sides.