Cruel World(22)

Quinn sat back from the computer. His finger hovered over the play button before punching it again. He watched in silence trying to make out the words that the couple said, but they were too indistinct, too garbled. But he could hear something else clearly enough in their voices, running like a frigid river below a layer of ice. Fear. They were both terrified. The tree enlarged on the screen, impossibly taking a step to the side as the shot turned up and caught the pale thing passing the car again. Quinn paused the video, staring at the image. The thin strip outside the vehicle was bent, its middle bulging slightly with a few small dents at its joint. The entire shape looked rounded, like a white stilt bending at its center.

Quinn examined the screen for several long minutes, something stirring in the back of his mind. His lips began to tingle and he blinked, his hand reaching for the computer to start the video again.

The screeching of brakes came from the direction of the highway followed by a bang that he felt reverberate through the desk. A clicking issued from somewhere in the house and the lights went out. The computer’s screen flipped to darkness, reflecting his face only inches from it along with the room behind him.

Quinn jerked, sitting back in the chair, his eyes flitting around the office. The power had gone out. The sound of the refrigerator motor winding down was the last noise and then supreme quiet invaded the house.

He stood, his legs wobbling and his stomach slewing as if it were overly full of a noxious soup. He moved down the hallway, pausing in the kitchen before continuing out the back door. The air was lighter outside, the smell of burning jet fuel no longer as pungent. Quinn breathed it in, trying to calm the nausea that rose and fell within him, a sickening tide. He looked toward the highway, listening for any further sounds but heard nothing. Only the wind spoke in the branches.

Fresh sea breeze coasted past him as he moved around to the rear of the house. He found the squat generator box and opened its access door. The generator was a large unit, capable of powering the entire house and attached garage. It was set up to turn on immediately following an outage, and it was only then he realized that it hadn’t kicked on when it should have.

He examined the controls and bundles of wires running into and out of the unit. One of the buttons in the center of the side panel was labeled ‘Auto Start’. He pressed it and pulled his hand away quickly. There was a sound from inside its steel shroud like dominoes snapping together. He waited for a moment and when nothing else happened, he pressed the button again. There was the same loud clicking and then silence.

Quinn stepped out of the enclosure and stared at the machine. Maybe it was out of gas? Foster had been meticulous about his work, always going the extra step to ensure that each job was done fully and correctly. But how long had it been since they’d had a power failure? A year? Two? The groundskeeper could’ve forgotten about the generator’s maintenance, or maybe he’d been in the midst of exchanging the fuel and gotten sidetracked on another project.

Quinn stepped back inside the enclosure and found the gas spout jutting from the side of the machine. Above it was a gauge, its level reading full. He frowned and dropped his hand away from the spout’s cap. For some reason, the video began to replay in his mind and he shivered before climbing back into the sunlit yard. There must be a manual for the generator somewhere, most likely in Foster’s house. Maybe there was a reset that he could engage to get the machine running.

As he walked around the side of the house and started down the drive, a metallic clanging erupted from the highway. Steel on steel rang through the forest, a hollow gonging that stopped him in his tracks. It went on for thirty seconds before there was a short bang and then nothing. Quinn swallowed, waiting, waiting. His muscles were solid beneath his skin, beginning to ache from being continuously taut. There was the low hum of an engine and then the crackling of tires coming closer down the driveway.

He turned and ran.

Hurdling across the lawn he raced up the stairs and flew to the kitchen door, slamming against it and bouncing back when the knob refused to turn in his hand.

Locked.

He’d locked it on the way in earlier. He cursed and ran around the side of the building, the sound of the engine getting louder behind him. At the back door, he swung inside, shutting and locking it before hurrying to the kitchen. Standing to one side of the large windows, he waited, eyes welded to the closest bend in the drive, blood surging in his ears.

The shining chrome of a truck’s grille appeared.

Quinn ducked away from the window and bent low as he hurried out of the room and down the hall to the office. Without a glance outside, he knelt by his father’s desk and pulled the lowest drawer open. The gray lockbox was covered by three file folders, which he pulled out and set on the floor. The code, the code, the code. He’d forgotten the code. His fingers hovered over the numbers, the sound of the truck’s engine getting louder before shutting off. The numbers sprang into his head as if flung there from outside. 942304. The lid of the box popped upward and only as he reached inside did he realize that the code was his birth date backwards.