“Yes, but it being tough to do doesn’t mean that others can’t do it,” she countered.
“Precisely. If I had not been in a powered zone, I would have had no shot,” he leaned back towards the table, resting his elbows on it with his hands folded. “I tracked you guys through the forum a long time ago, actually I did it with everyone on there, just in case this sort of scenario ever came up. I was only able to do it because I was the one who set up the forums and have access to that kind of information for banning purposes and such, so unless there’s another forum admin, you should be fine.”
Chelsea relaxed a little in her chair, breathing a light sigh of relief. The water began to whistle and she got up from her seat to pour it into the three mugs on the counter.
Zach’s story sounded solid, but something was off. It sounded true enough, but some part of it was not fully there. I had always had the strange ability to tell when a person was lying. I guess it was a sort of super power, nothing cool like heat vision or flying, but was perfect for situations like these.
“And?” I questioned him, the wrench grinding against the flooring. My mother would kill me if she knew what I was doing to her precious flooring.
Zach sighed, “You know the wrench is really not necessary. Do you seriously think that a small computer nerd at eighteen years old and greying hair is a threat? Did our month of talking on the forum not earn the slightest bit of trust?”
“You could have warned us that you were coming. We practically smashed your head in when you walked through the door.” Chelsea returned to the table with her trained waitress arms carrying the mugs of hot steaming tea.
“I couldn’t,” he replied, blowing on the tea to cool it. He took a sip and quickly jerked his head back, realizing that it was too hot to drink.
“Why not?” Chelsea asked. “You know that we both visit the forum daily. There were numerous times that you could have tried.”
“It’s not that simple-“
“No, it actually is that simple,” I said, getting annoyed with him dodging questions. There was something strange going on, not necessarily threatening, but something weird. “You could have simply posted in the forums that you were coming or even personal messaged me. C’mon computer man.”
“The power cut out three days ago,” he said, causing a deafening silence. It was so quiet that I could have heard the steam coming off of the tea. Chelsea’s back stiffened and her eyes were widening behind her taking a fake sip of the tea just to do something.
“What did you just say?” I asked in disbelief.
Zach blew on the tea and took a sip to clear his throat, “The power cut out of Buffalo, New York three days ago.” He took another sip before placing the mug down onto the table. His hands cupped it to stay warm.
“You’re saying that the military was overrun? Or that something bad happened at the plant?” I asked.
“I’m saying that the power cut out. I have no clue as to why that happened, but I don’t think that it was something bad that happened to the plant as I heard no explosions or anything of the sort. The closest power plant to Buffalo is a few miles north, but I can’t be sure if something bad did happen, the bad sort of thing that the contaminated would do.” Another silence followed.
Zach finally broke it, “I have a theory that the military abandoned the plant. Though I most likely was not, there is a chance that I was the last person who occupied the Buffalo area and the plant was simply shut down to conserve resources and military men. Though the flip side to that is where I lived was too far away to hear any gunshots.”
Just what I needed to end that interesting bit of information. He had no idea what caused the collapse of power in his area and was practically saying that the same thing was going to happen to ours. I did not know what was worse: not knowing why it was happening or that it could happen to us any time, leaving us totally unprepared.
“What else?” Chelsea asked.
“Chels? He did just tell us a lot,” I defended Zach for whatever reason. I rested the wrench against the last open chair, making a notion that Zach had earned some trust, but that the wrench was always at arm’s length.
“I told you everything-“
“No you didn’t,” She cut him off. “If you really were shut off of power, you had far greater chances of meeting civilization in Canada. The border patrol may still be active, and if not there would be some way that you could bunker down off of the border patrol’s resources.”
He was in a corner now, with nowhere to run. Zach took another sip of his tea to buy him some time. “Okay, fine. There’s more.” He took another sip. “Canada is gone, well the places that you think you knew. The only areas are the ones that weren’t hospitable before, ironic actually. I stumbled onto a Canadian website that was posted as someone was being overrun by the contaminated,” he paused for a second, regaining his breath. “I think that he was starved to death, cornered in his house by the contaminated and not wanting to become one of them. He updated the blog for a bit before finally checking out. Said he couldn’t do it anymore. Posted that he opened the window-“
“We get it,” I
