by Dave Conifer
Super Pulse
I: The Grid Goes Black
Dave Conifer
Copyright © 2016 by Dave Conifer
Cover Art and Design
by Laura Moyer of thebookcovermachine.com
Also by Dave Conifer:
Throwback (2004)
FireHouse (2007)
eBully (2008)
Snodgrass Vacation (2009)
Wrecker (2011)
Primary Justice (2011)
Hard Lines (2012)
Cold Cases: Man of Steel (2008)
Cold Cases: Zodiac Rogue (2013)
Cold Cases: Money Down (2014)
One
"And there she goes!" Nick Mercator yelled when he saw the alternator/generator light flickering on the dashboard of his Ford pickup. He wasn't sure what he'd noticed first: the warning light on the dashboard, or the sound of the sputtering engine as it misfired just after he'd reached the crown of the Ben Franklin Bridge and begun the descent into South Jersey. Probably the dashboard, he thought. There'd been trouble for weeks somewhere in the electrical food chain, and he'd developed a disturbing habit of watching for flashing idiot lights instead of keeping his eyes on the road.
At least there's not much traffic, he told himself as the truck finished its death throes and went silent. It was a Saturday morning, and a bit early for too many people to be out, and most of those who were out seemed to be heading into the city, not out of it. He considered his options. If the power steering hadn't stiffened up he'd have considered rolling all the way to the end of the bridge, where there'd be more room to get out of the way. But with the way the powerless truck was handling, he'd be lucky to get over to the side without crashing into the concrete wall which fronted the blue steel of the bridge.
As it was, there just wasn't any safe place to go. The span of highway across the bridge was all road and no shoulder. He had to make a choice, and fast. Moving to the right seemed somehow better than left, so he pushed the truck across the lanes as far as he could, until he was up against the dull blue steel of the bridge. Once there, he had to stand on the brake pedal to stop the truck, because the brakes were now about as effective as the power steering. After he'd come to a full stop he flicked the hazard light switch, but of course nothing happened when he did.
This isn't good, he thought to himself as he ran his hand through his graying but mostly-blond hair. He was now parked in a traffic lane on a busy bridge that spanned the Delaware River. What had begun as a leisurely ride into the city to pick up a load of beef and seafood had become a dangerous predicament. All he could think of to do was to grab his cell phone and walk back up the road far enough to warn other drivers to move into another lane, while calling for help.
Car trouble on the Ben wasn’t something he needed. Even before this his head had been pounding, thanks largely to the half a bottle of Jack Daniels he’d downed the night before. Until then he’d hoped to get home in time to sleep the hangover off before the cookouts started. Now it didn’t look like that was going to happen. All he could hope for was that the three Motrins he’d taken before leaving the house would keep his hangover at bay while he dealt with this.
He was about to step out of the car when he glanced at the side mirror and saw an airliner flying downriver from the north. It was a common sight from the bridge, given that the airport was just a few miles south of the city, and right on the river. What didn’t make sense was how low it was flying. Not only that, it was jerking side to side and waggling its wings erratically as it moved through the sky. He twisted in his seat to gape at the sight.
The plane was strangely silent as it descended, unevenly but rapidly. As Nick watched in horror, it maintained its path over the river in a trajectory that looked from where he sat at ground zero like it was heading straight for the bridge. As he stared, wondering what to do and what direction to run, the plane lurched westward toward the city as it continued to plummet. This can’t be happening. Sure that he was wrong about what he was seeing, he forced himself to watch as the plane hurtled toward the dense section of the city between the Ben Franklin and Betsy Ross bridges.
At the last minute the plane sliced back at the river, but it was too late. It was going down. He saw the massive fireball before he heard the explosion. His jaw fell away as he realized there was no other way to describe what he’d just witnessed. A huge jetliner, probably loaded with hundreds of people, had just crashed into the streets of North Philadelphia.
He looked away from the blaze just in time to see a dark blue economy-sized import smash into the rear of his truck. His head pitched forward with a painful snap of his neck, slamming his face into something hard. He grunted as he lifted his head far enough to see a smear of his own blood on the hard plastic ridge that topped the dashboard. Soon after he closed his eyes and tried to take stock of his injuries, he heard knuckles rapping on the window.
"Hey, dude! You okay?" More rapping. "Are you okay?"
Nick tried to nod after lifting his head again, but his neck hurt too much. Forgetting that there was no power, he pushed the button to roll down the window. When that didn't work, he felt around for the latch and pushed the door open.
"Sorry, dude!" the stranger yelled. "Like, my car died! I couldn't stop!" His frenetic voice was deafening in Nick’s ringing ears. "I didn't think there'd be anybody parked on the side like that! Hey, are you okay? Your head's busted!"
Nick tried to concentrate. The other driver was just a kid, probably only about twenty years old, judging by the unruly mop of hair and the overgrown beard that hid his baby face right up to a pair of black-framed glasses with lenses as thick as coke bottles. He wore a faded green t-shirt that was partially tucked into a pair of grimy dungarees, but mostly flapping over his belt.
“Did you see what happened?” the kid was shouting excitedly. “That plane just crashed over there! Did you see it?”
Nick extended a foot out of the car onto the asphalt to get out, but dizziness overcame him even before he put any weight on it. “Yeah, I saw it,” he said. “I was watching it just before you hammered me. Sounds like you were, too.”
As his head slumped back onto the steering wheel, he tried to cut through the growing haze enough to make sense of where he was and what was happening. Earlier that morning, a lazy July Saturday, he’d left the house in his Mercator Roofing pickup truck after volunteering to go get the eats for the Fourth of July weekend cookout that had become a tradition on his block back in the Jersey suburbs. Joe Garrison had agreed the night before to come along, but had begged off when Nick dropped by earlier that morning to pick him up. Probably a hangover, Nick had guessed. Didn’t stop me, but I’m used to it. It didn't matter. This was a one-man job, anyway. It took a couple hours at the Reading Terminal Market in Center City Philadelphia, but he’d found everything on the list he’d been given. It wasn’t even nine o’clock when he’d loaded it all into the bed of the truck and got on the road to head back to Jersey. As he drove, he found himself looking forward to a leisurely afternoon outside with neighbors, drinking beer and sampling the array of ribs, steak and fish that he was hauling home. The weather was beautiful, and it was going to be a great day. That was all gone now, at least for him. The way he felt, it looked like he'd be spending the day in the emergency room.
When he opened his eyes again, the kid was still yammering away. Nick sized him up rather than listening to him. He had the lean, tall build of somebody who was in decent shape mostly because of his age. “Are you okay? Are you okay?”
Nick waved at him to back off so he could open the door to step out.
“No way!” the kid said. “Just wait a second, dude. Take it easy.
” But he moved out of the way when it was clear that Nick wasn’t stopping. Wondering why the kid didn’t seem concerned about oncoming traffic, Nick squinted into the mirror again before opening the door all the way, and was surprised to see that there was none bearing down on them at all. That’s strange, he thought as he fought his way to his feet. He could feel the bridge swaying and shaking, or maybe that was his head making that happen.
“Are you okay?” the kid said yet again. “I don’t know what happened! My car shut down, so I tried to pull over. I saw you there, but my brakes wouldn’t work. What are you doing parked there?”
Now that they were standing toe to toe, Nick saw that the kid was even taller than he realized, towering over his own six foot frame. “I could ask you the same thing. Except I didn’t hit anybody.”
“What about that plane crash?” the kid asked. “Should we, like, report it or something?”
Nick rubbed his face and tried to sort it all out. “It couldn’t hurt. Go ahead, call it in. I’m sure air traffic control already knows about it. And the fire department. Were you watching it when you rear-ended me?”
“Sorry,” the kid said. “But I couldn’t do anything else, even if I was paying better attention. The car just died on me.”
“Sounds familiar,” Nick said. “I had the same thing. Once the electric shuts down, your brakes aren’t going to work.”
“Hey, you’re old. I thought you were, like, my age.”
“Thanks,” Nick said. “Got any more wise cracks, or can we get on with this?”
“Why were you stopped there?” the kid asked again.
“I just told you,” Nick said. “My truck pooped out. Same as your car, it sounds like. What a coincidence, you know? That's the kind of luck I have.”
“I guess,” the kid agreed. “I never had an accident before. What are we supposed to do? We have to, like, give our insurance and stuff, right?”
“Right, and registration,” Nick said. “Like,” he added.
“I got mine here,” the kid said. “I grabbed it while you were zoning out.” He held it out at Nick, who took it.
“I zoned out?” Nick asked. “For how long?”
“Like two minutes, maybe. I just stood here and waited--”
Another rumble of explosions, this time more distant, interrupted the kid. “Where’d that come from?” he asked.
“That way,” Nick said, looking south. “Whatever it was. That's where the airport is.”
“It is? Well, whatever it was,” the kid said, “It was big. Not like that plane, though. I felt that in my bones.”
“It was pretty far away,” Nick said. “A lot further than that plane was. Let’s get through this, okay?”
“Yeah, sure,” the kid said. “It was something big, though.
“Sure was,” Nick remarked.
“There were like two of those explosions while you were zoning.”
“I missed a lot,” Nick said as he inspected the paperwork he’d just been handed. “Nice to meet you, Henry Bishop. You live all the way down in Cape May?”
“Cape May Courthouse,” the kid corrected. “Big difference. And everybody calls me Dewey. Henry’s my dad.”
“Dewey?” Nick said. “You don’t look like a Dewey. You’re definitely a Henry, if you ask me. But my brain’s still out of whack. You hit me pretty hard. Mind if I call Triple-A first, before I show you my paperwork?” He pulled out his phone. “I’ve got an expensive load of food that I need to deliver. I’ll get this thing towed, and then I’ll have to figure out a way to get all this stuff home.” Without waiting for an answer, he walked around to the front of his truck, which somehow seemed to be a safer place to call from.
“Sure,” Dewey said as he followed. He stared at the roadway ahead, where it descended to the Jersey side of the river. “Hey, like, why’s everybody stopping?”
Nick looked up from his phone. Dewey was right. Every car he could see was either already stopped or in the process of doing so. Some had done what he and Dewey had, easing as far out of the way as possible. Others had rolled to a stop right where they were. The Ben Franklin Bridge was becoming a parking lot. The smoky haze drifting over from the city gave it an eerie quality that hadn’t been there a half-hour earlier when he’d driven onto the bridge.
“What’s going on?” he asked Dewey without taking his eyes off the road. “What happened to your car again?”
“I don’t know,” Dewey said. “It’s just like I said. It just died. No warning at all.”
"Are they stopping because of us?" Nick asked. "No, that wouldn't make any sense. They can't even see us. Some of them are ahead of us."
“Maybe they wanted to see the plane crash,” Dewey offered. “Maybe they stopped to call it in.”
"Did you see any cops or anything?" Nick asked. "Telling people to stop?"
"Nope," Dewey said. "And that isn't why I stopped, anyway. Or you." He stroked his bushy beard and looked around nervously. Now, other passengers were climbing out of their cars. "There's something else going on."
“Yup,” Nick agreed. “Definitely.” He held up his phone. "Still no bars. No nothing. It was on the charger this morning before I left, so I know it’s not that. So much for calling a tow truck. Unless you got one you wouldn't mind me using."
"Sure," Dewey said as he reached around to the back pocket of his baggy jeans. "Call two while you're at it, okay? I’m not driving out of here either, I don’t think." He fished out a phone and handed it over.
"How do you turn this on?" Nick asked after squinting at it.
"It is on," Dewey replied. "Let me see."
"Well, then it looks like you've got the same problem I have," Nick said as he handed it back. "No power."
"That's strange," Dewey said. "Like, I've got a charger in my car, plugged into the lighter. I just unplugged it."
"Maybe when your car freaked out, it went right up the line through the charger and into your phone," Nick suggested.
"Yeah, maybe,” Dewey allowed, with obvious reluctance. “I’m not sure it works that way. And what about yours?”
Nick looked up the road back towards Philadelphia. “Are you sure you didn’t see anybody blocking traffic?"
"There's nobody over on this end blocking traffic," Dewey pointed out. "But it's stopping from this direction, too."
“I think I’ll take a walk up the bridge,” Nick said. “Maybe I can figure out what’s going on. If nothing else, I can borrow somebody’s cell phone and get a truck or two in here to get us out.”
“I’ll come with you, dude,” Dewey said. “You mind?”
“Sure, why not?” Nick answered. “I’ll need somebody to carry me back to my truck if I faint or something.” He dabbed at his forehead with an arm and found fresh blood on the cuff of his sleeve. “I’ll be lucky if I don’t bleed out.”
“I don’t think it’s that bad,” Dewey said. “I already said I was sorry, all right? I couldn’t help it.”
“I’m just jerking your chain,” Nick told him. “It’s cool. If there’d been somebody in front of me, I’d have rammed him the same way.”
They came across dozen of drivers by the time they reached the peak of the bridge, all of whom told the same story. Their vehicles died a sudden and mysterious death, and when they tried to use their phones, they found that theirs, too, were as useful as a brick. It was clear that Nick's bloody forehead unnerved many of the people they encountered, no matter how many times he wiped at it. Nobody had any answers about anything.
“The fire at the plane crash is still burning,” Nick said as they walked. “Look at that cloud of black smoke. But I haven’t heard a single siren. Have you?”
“No,” Dewey said. “No police, no fire department, no nothing. I was just about to mention that.”
When they reached the crest of the bridge they could see the span as it stretched toward the gray skyline of Philadelphia. The road looked the same. Vehicles were parked haphazardly, with a growing number of peopl
e milling around them. Nick watched the city for signs that anything was wrong there. There were at least two fires further down the river, each producing black smoke. I-95, which ran along the river, was oddly still. Not trusting his eyes enough to be sure, he said nothing to Dewey about the disturbing view. But Dewey was looking in the same direction and was probably noticing the same thing. If he had, he hadn’t said anything about it. Nick decided not to be the first to bring it up. Not yet.
Two
“Well that didn’t help much,” Nick said as they headed back. “All we found out was that there a lot of other people in the same boat as us.”
Dewey shielded his eyes from the sun’s glare as he looked up at the thick spires of the bridge. “Do you know if those red beacon lights are usually on during the day?” he asked. “I think they are.”
Nick looked up. “Good question. I think they’re on all day and all night. By the way, did you see the city? I don’t know, it looked kind of dead.”
“I noticed that, too,” Dewey answered.
They walked silently downhill. Occasionally they were approached by other stranded drivers, some asking to borrow a cell phone and others simply needing to vent about their own confusion. By the time Nick and Dewey reached their own cars, they knew something bizarre was going on.
“What about that plane crash?" Dewey asked. "What was wrong with that plane? It sounded like the engines weren’t even running. It was nothing but a giant glider.”
“That was weird,” Nick said. "It was way too quiet for being so low.”
“I think those other explosions we heard were down at the airport,” Dewey continued. “Or near it. Maybe other planes crashed, too.”
“Now you’re only guessing,” Nick said. “You don’t know what that was. You didn't even know where the airport was. And I only heard one other explosion.” He shrugged. “Or two, maybe.”