Matthew Mather's Compendium

by Matthew Mather

  “It’s taking that long? It’s been ten hours already.”

  Chuck shook his head. “With the Internet down and this Scramble virus messing with logistics, nobody knows where anyone is or what they should be doing.”

  Rubbing my eyes, I took another sip and looked out the windows. It was snowing in earnest now, and a steady stream of flakes flashed out of the darkness, spinning and swirling with the wind.

  Chuck followed my eyes. “These storms coming, it’s going to be worse than Christmas a few years back, like a frozen Sandy.”

  I hadn’t been in New York for the big blizzard in 2010 that had dumped over two feet of snow the day after Christmas, but I’d heard about it: seven-foot-high drifts in Central Park, with waist-deep snow in the middle of the streets. There were snowstorms almost as bad every year now. I’d been here for Hurricane Sandy, though, and a frozen version of that frightened me. New York had become a magnet for perfect storms.

  “You guys should just get going,” I said, watching the snow. “We can’t leave. Not with Luke sick like this. He needs to rest, and we need to be close to hospitals.”

  “We’re not leaving you here,” said Susie firmly, looking at Chuck. He shrugged and finished off his drink.

  “Charles Mumford,” she continued after a pause, “don’t be ridiculous. All this is going to blow over. You’re being dramatic.”

  “Dramatic?” shot back Chuck, almost throwing his glass at the TV as he pointed at it. “Have you been watching the same stuff I have? China declaring war, a biological attack spread across the country, communications down—”

  “Don’t exaggerate. They did not declare war. That was just some minister puffing his chest for the cameras,” countered Susie. “Anyway, look at all this stuff.” She motioned around the apartment. “By God, we could hole up in here and survive till next Christmas with all this.”

  Finishing my drink, I tried to calm the mood. “I don’t want you guys to fight. I think this will blow over and by tomorrow morning things will calm down.” I turned to Chuck. “If you want to get going, I totally understand. Do what’s best for your family. I mean it.” I looked him in the eye, smiling, trying to convey my seriousness. Sighing, I added, “I need to get some sleep.”

  Chuck scratched his head and put his glass down on the kitchen counter. “Me too. I’ll see you later, buddy.” He walked over and hugged me, taking my glass from my hand.

  Susie got up and gave me a kiss on the cheek. “We’ll see you in the morning,” she whispered in my ear, hugging me tightly.

  “Please go if he wants,” I whispered back.

  Closing the door behind me as I left, I quietly opened our apartment door. After locking the door, I crept into the bedroom, softly closing that door as well. My whole world was lying on the bed in front of me. In the ghostly glow from the LED display on our bedside alarm clock, I could just make out the lumps that were Lauren and Luke. The room smelled humid and lived-in, like a nest, and that thought brought a smile to my face. I stood still and watched them, feeling wonder and joy, their rhythmic breathing soothing my senses.

  Luke coughed and took in two or three quick, deep breaths, as if he couldn’t breathe properly, but then he sighed and quieted down.

  Silently, I stripped down and slid under the covers. Luke was in the middle of the bed, so I curled up around him, with Lauren on the other side. Leaning over, I brushed a lock of hair away from Lauren’s forehead and kissed her. She mumbled and I kissed her again, and then, with a deep breath, I pulled one of the pillows under my head and closed my eyes.

  Everything is going to be fine.

  Day 2: Christmas Eve, December 24

  7:05 a.m.

  I awoke with a start.

  My dreams were filled with confused images of angry men in forests. I was flying, my grip on Luke slipping, and Lauren was gone, sliding down a stairwell, down into the earth, while I floated and floated. A scream pulled me out of the vision, layers of dreams snapping apart, until I sat bolt upright in bed, gasping.

  Breathing hard, I looked around. It was pitch black. Wait, not totally black. A thin light hung like a gray halo around the outline of our bedroom curtains. Luke and Lauren were still beside me. Breathlessly, I leaned down to Luke. He’s still breathing, thank God.

  It was quiet. Lauren shifted slightly. Everything was fine. Shivering, I pulled the covers around me and put my head back down on the pillow. Slowly, my heart calmed its thumping, and a dead silence descended.

  It’s too dark. I checked the clock beside my head. It was off, blank. We must be having a power failure. I picked up my cell phone from the night stand: 7:05 a.m. It was early, and it was freezing.

  Quietly, I slipped off the side of the bed, rummaging in the hamper for my bathrobe, and then felt around on the floor for my slippers. Wrapping the robe around me, I shivered and left the bedroom.

  The main room of our apartment was equally dead. None of the familiar little lights, none of the glowing time displays on the appliances. The little Christmas tree on the side table was completely dark. Outside, snow swept by the windows in the muted half-light, the pressure of the wind against the glass the only thing audible, a dull thudding with each squall of flakes.

  Walking to our entranceway, I tapped the digital thermostat on the wall. It was also blank. I crept back into the bedroom and quietly pulled an extra blanket from the closet and laid it across Luke and Lauren, and then pulled out a sweater for myself, feeling unprepared for whatever was happening.

  I decided to go and see if Susie and Chuck were up. Pulling on some jeans and sneakers and the sweater, I tiptoed next door.

  Out in the hallway, the emergency lighting was on, a harsh, white light that spread out from floodlights above the exit stairwell, casting long shadows behind me in the empty space. Standing in front of Chuck’s place, I hesitated but then knocked, and then again after a pause.

  No response at all. Could they have left? I had a hard time imagining that they’d just leave like that, but then again . . .

  I knocked once again, firmly this time, demanding their attention, but there was still no answer. I tried the door handle, and it easily clicked around, the door silently sliding open in front of me. Inside, the curtains were drawn back, and in the dim light I could see the jumble of bags still on the floor. I looked in the bedrooms, checked in the bathroom, but no Chuck or Susie or Ellarose.

  Maybe they left all this stuff for us?

  Pulling the blanket off their bed, I wrapped it around myself and shuffled into the living room, collapsing onto their couch. Fear crept into the pit of my stomach. What happened? Why is the power off? And why didn’t Chuck wake me if something went wrong?

  I thought of trying to reach my brothers, to see if they were okay. They had an oil furnace in the old house, with enough oil to last the winter, so at least they’d be warm if anything went wrong over there. My brothers were resourceful. I shouldn’t worry about them.

  The wind drove hard against the windows, echoing in the lifeless room. Lifeless. That’s how it felt without the comforting, low-level thrum of the machines, without their little lights blinking, motors whirring, unseen but ever present, surrounding me in an electronic cocoon.

  But one light would still work. My cell phone still had power, at least for now. I felt its pull like a phantom limb. Maybe I should go check it, see if I have any messages and remove the battery, save the charge, just in case. Maybe the cell networks weren’t as jammed up anymore. Or maybe a landline? Do they have their own power? I thought so, trying to remember if I’d used a landline during a previous power failure, but I couldn’t think of anyone who still had one.

  I needed to find out what was going on, but how? A radio. They’d still be broadcasting. I didn’t have a battery-powered radio, but I was sure Chuck must have left one in one of these bags. Thank God he left all this stuff.

  I glanced out the windows again. It looked brutal outside. Yesterday morning my bi
ggest problem was figuring out how to deliver some Christmas gifts—how quickly the world had changed.

  What if Luke is really sick? What if an epidemic is raging out in that snowstorm?

  “Little help here?”

  My head swiveled around to find Chuck in the doorway, sagging under a load of bags and backpacks. He was trying to wedge himself through.

  Stuck in the doorway, Chuck frowned. “Hey, are you okay? Is Luke okay?”

  I don’t think I was ever so glad to see anyone in my life. I wiped my eyes with the back of one hand. “Everything’s fine.”

  “If you say so.” Again he tried to force his way through, and again he asked, “A little help here?”

  Shaking my head to clear it, I jumped up to grab some bags. Susie, also carrying bags, appeared behind him with Ellarose strapped to her chest. Tony, our doorman, was behind her and carrying even more than Chuck. Everyone was sweating, and they haphazardly dropped their loads as they entered.

  “Want me to do another trip?” asked Tony, breathing heavy, leaning over.

  “Why don’t you take a break with Susie and Ellarose?” Chuck sighed, wiping his forehead with one arm. “Maybe fire up some coffee on the butane burner? Me and Mike’ll get the generator.”

  The generator? Now it was my turn to frown. “Sounds heavy.”

  “It is heavy,” laughed Chuck. “Come on, chubby, time to get your workout.”

  Leaving the rest of them behind, Chuck and I walked to the emergency exit to go down the stairs. The elevators weren’t working. It was the first time I’d ever been in the stairwell, and the sounds of our feet on the bare metal steps echoed off the cinder block walls.

  “So what happened?” I asked as we descended the first set of stairs.

  “Power went off about five and I’ve been running up and down since then, grabbing as much stuff as I can before everyone else wakes up.”

  “Before everyone wakes up?”

  “Call me paranoid, but I’d prefer if as few people as possible know how much stuff we’re going to have socked away in Fort Mumford.”

  His apartment was already a military base. I wondered where the perimeter was. “What I meant was, what happened with the power? Why’s it so cold?”

  “It’s cold because the power’s out, and this building is wired for control using the Internet. There’s oil in the furnace, but all the controls are digital and the networks aren’t working.”

  “Aha.” I remembered that a big selling point of this new building was the array of fancy building controls that used the Internet, letting you control the temperature of each room in your house remotely from Hong Kong if you wanted. The problem was that the onsite controls were run off IP networks, and from what Chuck was saying, they were down. “Shouldn’t the backup generator come on?”

  “It should have, but it didn’t fire up, and it wouldn’t run the heating vents anyway. All the building staff are gone. There’s already a foot of snow, and more coming fast. National Guard’s been called out, and they’re telling everyone to stay put. We’ve gotta do this ourselves.”

  “Why’d Tony stay?”

  “He sent his mom down to Tampa for the holidays to see her sister, remember?”

  I nodded. “So, again, what happened with the power?”

  Chuck stopped on the third landing, halfway down. “I was scanning the news channels at about four forty-five when they started reporting power outages in Connecticut, and then, blammo, just after five, the lights went out.”

  “Is it the snowstorm?” The alternatives were frightening.

  “Maybe.”

  “Did they say anything else about the bird flu?”

  “Just a muddled mess,” he replied with a shrug. “Nobody knows what’s going on.” He jogged down a few more steps. “Borders are shut down, international travel halted,” he continued, detailing a worldwide crisis like items on a breakfast menu. “CDC can’t confirm or deny anything, but hospitals everywhere are flooded with people reporting symptoms. They’re saying it’s some kind of coordinated biological attack, but I don’t buy it.”

  “Why?”

  Chuck’s conspiracy-bent mind was always looking behind the news to seek out the “real” story, but for once I was eager to hear his theories. We arrived on the ground floor and exited to the lobby to take the basement stairs down. We stopped in the white marble foyer beside the Japanese garden, now starkly illuminated by the emergency lighting.

  “Do you know that nearly ninety percent of the emergency notification systems in America are all supplied by the same company?”

  “So?”

  “Hack that one company and, wham, instant access to nationwide chaos.”

  “Why would someone do that?”

  “Chaos, terror. But I have another theory.” He opened the door to the basement. “Invasion.” He walked down ahead of me.

  I hurried after him. “Invasion?”

  Chuck swung open the door to the first storage locker and began checking box tags with a flashlight. “Think about it. Disrupt government services, cut off supply lines and transportation, eliminate communications, and then confine civilians indoors before decimating the industrial base, in this case by cutting off power. It’s the same cyberattack profile that the Russians used when they rolled into Georgia in 2008, more or less.”

  “That doesn’t make any sense.”

  He found the box he was looking for and dragged it out. “I mean Georgia in Asia, not the Georgia with Atlanta.”

  “I got that.”

  He opened the box and looked back at me. “Come on, son, grab an end.”

  Leaning down, I picked up one end of the generator in the box, grunting to bear its weight as he lifted the other end, and we began shuffle-walking it toward the stairs. For the next few minutes we struggled up. It wasn’t that heavy, but it was awkward, and it felt like we were carrying a body. I needed a break by the time we got to the third landing.

  “Stop,” I panted, putting the generator down and groaning while I stretched my back. “How much does this thing weigh?”

  “The box said a hundred and twenty. It’s a beauty, runs on gas, diesel, pretty much anything that’ll explode.”

  “Vodka?”

  “That we drink,” he laughed.

  Taking a deep breath, I wiped the sweat streaming down my temples.

  “Nobody has ever invaded America. You can’t be serious.”

  Chuck laughed. “The Canadians did. They even burned the White House down.”

  “That was a long time ago, and it was more of a stunt than an invasion.”

  “History tends to repeat itself.” He motioned down at the generator. “Come on, boy.”

  I took a deep breath, stretching my back again, and then leaned over to pick up the generator. “So your big idea is that we’re being invaded by the Canadians?”

  “Would explain the snow, eh?” he laughed. “Maybe not literally the same thing, but it’s an idea.”

  “It is an idea.” I rolled my eyes. Blame Canada.

  I grunted and groaned my way up another two flights before begging off for another break. Chuck was sweating but looked comfortable, and he’d been doing this for hours already. I couldn’t even hear him breathing but realized it would be hard to hear anything above my own labored wheezing and pounding heart. I decided my New Year’s resolution would be to get a new gym membership, and more than that, to actually go.

  Just then the door beside us, on the fifth-floor landing, swung open and banged hard into Chuck. In the open doorway I found myself staring directly into someone’s headlamp.

  “Oh, wow, sorry!” whoever it was exclaimed.

  Chuck yelped at the impact, dancing backwards and shaking one hand. The man stepped into the stairwell, peering around the door.

  “Sorry about that, I didn’t think—”

  “No worries,” said Chuck, regaining his composure, but still massaging the hand the doo
r had hit.

  We all eyeballed each other for a second.

  “Do you guys know what happened to the power?”

  “We know as much as you,” I replied. “I’m Mike, and this is Chuck.”

  “Yeah, I recognize you guys. I seen you going in and out sometimes.”

  I didn’t recognize him, but there were a lot of people in the building.

  “I’m Paul,” he said, and then after a pause added, “from 514.”

  He stretched out his hand, and I began to extend mine, but Chuck pushed me back.

  “Sorry,” said Chuck, squinting into the light of Paul’s headlamp. “Can’t be too careful, that bird flu warning and all. Hey, could you turn that off?”

  “Sure.” Paul turned off his headlamp and looked down at the generator. “What’s that?”

  Chuck hesitated. “It’s a generator.”

  “Like, from the building or something?”

  “No, it’s ours.”

  “You got any stuff we could borrow?”

  “Sorry. We just got this,” lied Chuck. “Left over from a job site I was working on.”

  “Oh yeah?”

  Chuck stared at him. The pause became uncomfortable. “Yeah. And if you don’t mind, we need to get going.”

  Paul shrugged. “Okay, just looking for a little neighborly help. This is some weird shit going on. Have you seen the snow outside? You can barely see the cars anymore.”

  Another second or two of uncomfortable silence.

  “Well, good luck,” said Chuck, motioning for me to pick up my end again. He picked his up with only one hand this time. “I’m sure the power will be up soon and we’re just wasting our time.”

  We started up the stairs, and Paul went down, opening the door on the fourth floor and disappearing.

  As soon we reached our floor, Chuck dropped his end. “Did you see his pants?”

  I shook my head. “Why?”

  “Soaked from the knees down, and his sneakers were soaked as well. He must have been outside.”

  “So what? Maybe he went out to have a look.”