Rick pulled the phone away and scrunched his face in confusion. “Please try texting your intended recipient?” He repeated the phrase to himself, wondering if he had somehow misheard. “I’ve never heard that message before. Still, though, good idea.”
Rick brought up his text messaging app and punched in a quick message to his wife.
U ok? I dont know whats going on. Stay inside and away from the car. K?
He was just about to hit the “send” button when he noticed that the phone was rapidly growing warm on the backside. He turned it over and saw, to his horror, that the back case was warped outward like there was a balloon beneath it that was being blown up. Realizing what was happening, Rick didn’t hesitate to throw the phone as far as he possibly could, sending it through the air to skitter along the asphalt road before it, too, exploded into flames.
A battery becoming compromised, expanding and then exploding was not a common occurrence, but it had happened before, especially with certain models of phones and batteries that didn’t go through stringent quality checks. For it to happen in conjunction with everything else that was going on, though, seemed more than just a coincidence in Rick’s mind. He stared at the small phone as flames slowly melted the plastic, reducing it to nothing more than a pile of blackened metal and plastic sludge on the road. Giving the mound of what used to be his phone a wide berth, Rick continued to trudge along the road as it rose steadily and turned into the overpass. When he finally reached the peak, he stopped and turned to look at the city to the east.
“Nope. Definitely not a coincidence.” Rick stared, mouth agape, at the destruction before him. At least two other planes had fallen into the city, one striking a skyscraper which was teetering on the edge of falling over. The smoke that filled the sky was fed from fires that were on every street and in most of the buildings he saw. The magnitude of the destruction was overwhelming and Rick turned around and collapsed onto the ground as his mind reeled.
He realized in the back of his mind that he was in shock, and most likely had been since he had started walking away from the airport. As the adrenaline began to wear off, though, he could feel his entire body begin to shake as his thoughts raced, unhindered and uncontrollable. Whatever was going on was not, he determined, a dream, nor was it some sort of freak accident. Cars didn’t shut off and start leaking gasoline. Ordinary phones didn’t have their batteries short circuit and explode. Planes didn’t just fall from the sky.
Rick put his head back against the concrete side of the overpass and closed his eyes, feeling himself sinking into a black pit of unconsciousness. He welcomed it and the relief that he hoped it would bring.
Chapter 3
The Waters’ Homestead
Ellisville, VA
“This place looks like crap!”
“Language, Jacob!”
“Sorry, mom.”
“Well it is kind of crappy.”
“Mark! That’s enough from you, too!” Dianne brushed a few strands of hair from her face and took a deep breath as she surveyed the kitchen. Water was everywhere, spreading slowly out over the hardwood floors and soaking into the large rug under the dining room table. Grey smoke and the smell of burning electronics filled the air while a large piece of the edge of the table itself still smoked from the remnants of Dianne’s cellphone. She had left it on the table when she went outside, and a few seconds after she came back in to try to make another call, it had burst into flames in front of her. A few baking pans full of water from the sink later and the fire had been put out, though the dining room was a complete wreck as a result.
“Mom? Can I come down now?”
“Not yet, sweetie!” Dianne called up the stairs to her daughter, then turned to her sons. “Mark, I need you to go make sure the animals are okay. The car was pretty loud and they might have been spooked. Give them some extra food to calm them down, all right?”
“Sure thing, mom.”
Dianne patted her eldest son on the back as he walked out the back door. She turned to Jacob, who was sitting on the stairs looking into the kitchen. “I need you to go play with your sister upstairs, okay?”
“But I want—”
“Kiddo. I need your help right now, okay?” Dianne was doing her best to keep the stress out of her voice, but she could feel herself reaching her limit and needed a few minutes alone to figure out what to do.
“Fine…” Jacob’s shoulders slouched as he went up the stairs and Dianne sighed at his attitude before turning back to survey the kitchen.
“Right. So. The car exploded. My phone exploded. Just a perfectly normal day here.” Dianne stepped gingerly through the water in the kitchen and picked up the landline telephone hanging on the wall. Rick had insisted on having one installed ‘just in case there’s an emergency’ a fact that Dianne was grateful for. She held the phone to her ear and heard a dial tone, then excitedly dialed the number for Rick’s cellphone. Her excitement quickly waned as she heard an error message declaring that ‘the number you’ve dialed is currently unavailable.’
“Damn!” Dianne slammed the phone against the receiver and leaned her arm on the wall, putting her head against it and closing her eyes. “Why did you have to go out of town on business on this week of all weeks, Rick? Why?”
Dianne quickly dialed another number for their neighbors down the road but got the same message. She dialed another and another and each time the message was the same. ‘The number you’ve dialed is currently unavailable.’
Dianne stood in the kitchen, leaning up against the wall for several more minutes before slowing standing back up and taking in a deep breath. “Right. First things first, clean out the kitchen. Then get the truck out, make sure it still runs. Then we’ll head into town and see what’s going on there.” Dianne nodded to herself and sighed at the mess before her. With a tentative plan in hand she was feeling slightly better about the situation at hand, but there was still a nagging feeling in the back of her head that whatever had happened with the car and the phone was a part of something far, far greater.
Twenty minutes later—and with the help of all three children, a pile of old towels and a mop—the kitchen floor was finally looking better. The water was cleared up relatively quickly after which Dianne ran the mop over everything and took the rug outside to get hosed down by Mark and Jacob and left to dry in the sun. Using a pair of rubber gloves and a few layers of plastic bags, Dianne scraped the remnants of her phone off of the table and dumped it and the bags into a metal trash can at the edge of the driveway. The burned table would have to be dealt with more thoroughly later on, but she scrubbed it for long enough to feel comfortable sitting down at it again. The smoke in the house was the last to be dealt with, after she came
back inside and the smell hit her nostrils again. She shooed the three children out onto the back porch before opening several windows both downstairs and upstairs to let everything air out.
With the house in order, Dianne walked out the front door to look at the car again. It was still smoldering in the front driveway, but the fire had long since been put out thanks to the overzealous use of a pair of garden hoses. She hated leaving the burned-out hulk sitting in the driveway, but with no way to move it without getting their tractor out, she decided to leave it for another time.