TV sets went on in blares of snow. In a house on Spruce Street, a blender whirred into life, trying to blend a cheese-and-egg mixture that had congealed long since. The blender’s motor soon overloaded and blew out. A power saw whined into life in a deserted garage, puffing sawdust out of its guts. Stove burners began to glow. Marvin Gaye began to sing from the loudspeakers of an oldies record shop called the Wax Museum; the words, backed by a jive disco beat, seemed like a dream of the past come to life: “
A power transformer blew on Maple Street and a gaudy spiral of purple sparks drifted down, lit on the wet grass, and went out.
At the power station, one of the generators began to whine at a higher, more desperate note. It began to smoke. People backed away, poised just below the point of panic. The place began to fill with the sickish-sweet smell of ozone. A buzzer went off stridently.
“Too high!” Brad roared. “Bastard’s crossing over! Overloading!”
He scrambled across the room and slammed both switches back up. The whine of the generators began to die, but not before there was a loud pop and screams, deadened by the safety glass, from below.
“Holy crow,” Ralph said. “One of em’s afire.”
Above them, the fluorescents faded to sullen cores of white light, then went out completely. Brad jerked open the control room door and came out on the landing. His words echoed flatly in the big open space. “Get the foam to that! Hustle!”
Several foam extinguishers were turned on the generators, and the fire was doused. The smell of ozone still hung on the air. The others crowded out on the landing beside Brad.
Stu laid a hand on his shoulder. “I’m sorry it turned out the way it did, man,” he said.
Brad turned toward him, grinning. “Sorry? What for?”
“Well, it caught fire, didn’t it?” Jack asked.
“Shit, yes! It surely did! And somewhere around North Street there’s a transformer all blown to shit. We forgot, goddammit, we forgot! They got sick, they died, but they didn’t go around turning off their electrical appliances before they did it! There are TVs on, and ovens, and electric blankets, all over Boulder. Hell of a power drain. These generators, they’re built to cross over when the load’s heavy in one place and light in another. That one down there tried to cross, but all the others were shut down, see?” Brad was fairly jerking with excitement. “Gary! You remember the way Gary, Indiana, was burned to the ground?”
They nodded.
“Can’t be sure, we’ll never be sure, but what happened here could have happened there. Could be the power didn’t go off soon enough. One shorted-out electric blanket could have been enough under the right conditions, just like Mrs. O’Leary’s cow kicking over that lantern in Chicago. These gennies tried to cross and had nothing to cross
“If you say so,” Ralph responded doubtfully.
Brad said, “We’ve got the job to do all over again, but only on one motor. We’ll be in business. But—” Brad had begun to snap his fingers, an unconscious gesture of excitement. “We don’t dare turn the juice back on until we’re sure. Can we get another work-crew? A dozen guys or so?”
“Sure, I guess so,” Stu said. “What for?”
“A Turning-Off Crew. Just a bunch of guys to go around Boulder and turn off everything that was left on. We don’t dare turn the juice back on until that gets done. We got no fire department, man.” Brad laughed a little crazily.
“We’re having a Free Zone Committee meeting tomorrow night,” Stu said. “You come on over and explain why you want them, and you’ll get your men. But are you sure that overload won’t happen again?”
“Pretty damn sure, yeah. It wouldn’t have happened today if there hadn’t been so much stuff left on. Speaking of that, somebody ought to go over to North Boulder and see if it’s burning down.”
Nobody was sure if Brad was joking or not. As it turned out there were several small fires, mostly from hot appliances. None of them spread in the drizzle that was falling. And what people in the Zone remembered later about the first of September 1990 was that it was the day the power came back on—if only for thirty seconds or so.
An hour later, Fran pedaled her bike into Eben G. Fine Park across from Harold’s. At the park’s north end, just beyond the picnic tables, Boulder Stream chuckled mildly along. The morning’s drizzly rain was turning into a fine mist.
She looked around for Larry, didn’t see him, and parked her bike. She walked through the dewy grass toward the swings and a voice said, “Over here, Frannie.”
Startled, she looked toward the building that housed the men’s and women’s toilets, and felt a moment of utter confused fear. A tall figure was standing in the shadows of the short passageway running through the center of the dual comfort station, and for just a moment she thought…
Then the figure stepped out and it was Larry, dressed in faded jeans and a khaki shirt. Fran relaxed.
“Did I scare you?” he asked.
“You did, just a little.” She sat down in one of the swings, the thud of her heart beginning to slow. “I just saw a shape, standing there in the dark…”
“I’m sorry. I thought it might be safer, even though there’s no direct line of sight from here to Harold’s place. I see you rode a bicycle, too.”
She nodded. “Quieter.”
“I stowed mine out of sight in that shelter.” He nodded to an open-walled, low-roofed building by the playground.
Frannie trundled her bike between the swings and the slide and into the shelter. The odor inside was musty and fetid. The place had been a make-out spot for kids too young or too stoned to drive, she guessed. It was littered with beer bottles and cigarette ends. There was a crumpled pair of panties in the far corner and the remains of a small fire in the near one. She parked her bike next to Larry’s and came back outside quickly. In those shadows, with the scent of that long-dead sex-musk in her nose, it was too easy to imagine the dark man standing just behind her, his twisted coathanger in hand.
“Regular Holiday Inn, isn’t it?” Larry said dryly.
“Not my idea of pleasant accommodations,” Fran said with a little shiver. “No matter what comes of this, Larry, I want to tell Stu everything tonight.”
Larry nodded. “Yeah, and not just because he’s on the committee. He’s also the marshal.”
Fran looked at him, troubled. Really for the first time she understood that this expedition might end with Harold in jail. They were going to sneak into his house without a warrant or anything and poke around.
“Oh, bad,” she said.
“Not too good, is it?” he agreed. “You want to call it off?”
She thought for a long time and then shook her head.
“Good. I think we ought to know, one way or the other.”
“Are you sure they’re both gone?”
“Yes. I saw Harold driving one of the Burial Committee trucks early this morning. And all the people who were on the Power Committee were invited over for the tryout.”
“You sure she went?”
“It would look damn funny if she didn’t, wouldn’t it?”
Fran thought that over, then nodded. “I guess it would. By the way, Stu said they hope to have most of the town electrified again by the sixth.”
“That’s going to be a mighty day,” Larry said, and thought how nice it would be to sit down in Shannon’s or the Broken Drum with a big Fender guitar and an even bigger amp and play something—anything, as long as it was simple and had a heavy beat—at full volume. “Gloria,” maybe, or “Walkin’ the Dog.” Just about anything, in fact, except “Baby, Can You Dig Your Man?”
“Maybe,” Fran said, “we ought to have a cover story, though. Just in case.”
Larry grinned crookedly. “Want to say we’re selling magazine subscriptions if one of them comes back?”
“Har-har, Larry.”
“Well, we could say we came to tell her what you just told me about getting the juice turned on again. If she’s
