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Stupid for openin’ the door.
Stupid for goin’ outside.
Stupid, stupid, stupid.
If it had been for a human, I could understand.
But a bird?
An already half-dead bird, at that.
How the building we were in still had a roof, I didn’t know.
I didn’t want to question it or jinx it.
My heart didn’t stop hammering for longer than was probably good for me, and as much as I wanted to wring his neck, I wanted to hug him even more. His watch told me how his heart was pounding too, and despite his outward calm, I knew he was as scared as me. I wanted to hold him and make sure he was okay, make sure he was still in one piece.
I also wanted to pummel the shit out of him for scarin’ me like that.
And then the lights went out. He got up and went to the control dash, flipping a few switches and checkin’ the data reel. All of the screens were now black bar one, and I could guess the antennas or satellite that had been on the roof were now a few suburbs over.
It had taken me a second to realise the noise was dying down, like I’d stood next to heavy duty machinery or a jet engine, and even though the noise was gone, my ears still rang with the sound of it.
“He’s tracking east too fast,” Jeremiah said. “Once he touched land, he pinballed east.” He glanced back at Doreen like that wasn’t good news.
She got up and basically handed Suri over to me.
Poor Suri.
She looked unwell, stressed, and scared.
“You okay?” I asked her.
She nodded quickly. “I wasn’t prepared... I thought I was...”
I rubbed her arm. “You did good.”
She cradled Bruce and scrubbed a tear from her cheek.
“This has gotta be the eye, right?” I asked. Jeremiah gave me a nod, and I rubbed Suri’s arm again. “We’re halfway done. Just another half to go and it’ll all be over.”
I was still holding the towel with the bird in it—which was probably dead already; I wasn’t game to look—so I got up and found a box on the shelf. I tipped the contents out and gently put the towel in it and closed the lid. I put it down by Suri and she nodded.
“I’ll go out and see if I can fix the generator. Maybe it got disconnected from the mains,” I said.
Jeremiah was checking his phone. “No mobile service. Towers must be down.”
Fuck.
No power, no phone service.
“Can you try email?” Doreen asked.
Jeremiah quickly thumbed his phone screen, then looked up. “Cannot be sent.”
Jesus.
No internet meant major infrastructural damage.
