The Fill and Truck Plaza

Dialing…

Trent watched the Skype app dial Diane's account again. A popup warned him that he had a bad connection. Not surprising, considering he had run out of free data and now relied on the office work station's WiFi at a Fill and Truck Travel Plaza.

Pick up, pick up, he thought. June Claire.

Skype asked him if he wanted to leave a message and Trent snarled at it. Diane had agreed. She had agreed! The call ended. Should he try again? His thumb hovered over the green camera icon.

Dialing…

Four other travelers shared the office space with him. Two disinterested business-types with uncomfortable-looking shoes, and a pair of kids maybe seventeen, holding hands and tapping away on their phone screens.

Connection Lost

Trent let out a shaky breath. He felt years of pushing too hard settle into his bones. His joints ached, and he wanted a drink. Without much hope, he called his ex-wife's account again. The call immediately failed.

One of the business types stood up and muttered something about 'redneck WiFi'. She started for the cashier counter but, before the woman had gone three steps, the lights flickered twice and died. A unanimous and instantaneous groan of, “Oh come ON!” rose from within the truck stop. When the backup generators didn't back up, a battery-powered warning alarm went off from the back. It sounded muted. Several people laughed nervously.

Trent, who had been staring at his screen, blinked deliberately. He could see the store through his peripheral vision, but enough light came in through the doors and windows that he would be able to see well, once the afterglow of the screen faded. Unfortunately the sun set in less than an hour.

Someone ran out from the car gear section clutching something large and clanking to their chest. They wrenched open the doors and drove away. Trent realized that all of the gas pump lights were out. In fact—he ducked down to see farther—all of the lights of the surrounding town had gone dark, too. The only human lights in that early dusk came from headlights speeding by. People honked at each other as they sped through lightless intersections.

Confusion bubbled up in the store. Two more people—including the business woman, if Trent had seen correctly—ran off with merchandise before a heavy man set himself to block the exit. He smelled like cigarettes and french fries, but he had a clear voice that carried well. “Who here's got a flashlight?” he called out.

The young couple in Trent's room switched on their phone flashlights and moved out to the main space. The other customers followed suit, but Trent hesitated. He had thirty-percent battery remaining, and he didn't want to miss a call from his little birthday girl.

From the light of their phones the employees could find the flashlights in the back rooms. One enterprising trucker started passing out his own Bic lighters, though he kept at least three for himself. When asked why he carried so many, the man shrugged. Someone suggested raiding the battery and flashlight sections, but the assistant manager, a full woman with the side of her head shaved, said no.

Sirens raced down the street.

Trent noticed that the man guarding the door kept frowning down at his phone.

“Anything on the news about this?” Trent asked, walking over to him.

The man shook his head. “Naw, man.”

“Have you tried checking the local stations? Twitter?”

The man's dark eyes stared at his phone. “There's no news,” he said. When Trent shifted to leave, the man added in a hushed undertone, “There's no news at all. Nothing's updated for the last fifteen minutes. No local, nothing from emergency services, not even overseas.”

More sirens outside. The vehicles had to slow down to weave through thickening lanes of traffic. Their flashing lights lit up the empty cars in the parking lot and strobed across the peoples' faces inside.

“Maybe your carrier is down, too, so your screen can't refresh,” Trent suggested.

The man grunted. “That makes sense. Good thinking.”

Of course, Trent chose not to point out that, if the carriers were down, then this blackout, while maybe not as widespread as the improvised guard feared, was still several orders of magnitude larger than southeast Oklahoma. Maybe June Claire hadn't answered because she couldn't.

From the rising panic in the crowd's voices, they had noticed it, too. One blamed aliens; another, Russia; and an OSU fan shook his fist at OU. The assistant manager came inside—Trent gathered that she'd gone out to check on the generators and town—but she shook her head. Someone demanded to know what they were going to do. No one suggested leaving quite yet. Trent saw a cringing man near the back of the crowd glance repeatedly at the knife case.

Before Trent could say something, the big man called out over the din, “We're wasting battery power. Try and share flashlights, maybe only two or three at a time. An employee and a customer, at least. You in the back,” he pointed at the man who had been eyeing the knives, “keep your light on.”

The crowd bunched around behind the designated light carriers, and the guard nodded approvingly. The assistant manager flashed him a tight smile. She was doing a good job keeping her fear in check.

“Smart,” Trent murmured. “You make them work as a team, make them less likely to turn on each other and lash out.”

“That's the plan,” the man replied. He looked sideways at Trent. If the others had come together as a team, that left one lone man for the guard to worry about.

“I found something,” a woman exclaimed. Everyone hushed. “Listen to this; listen!” She read off her phone, “A tweet from a public library in Oklahoma City: 'Downtown's gone dark, but books never run out of batteries; ride out bad weather with a good friend.' Sent twenty minutes ago. No updates since then.”

The guard shifted and Trent asked him if he lived in Oklahoma City. “Tulsa,” the man replied, “but I've got family there.”

“Owasso.”

If the blackouts had hit Oklahoma City then they had hit Tulsa, too, and Owasso clung like a burr to Tulsa's side. Trent wanted to see June Claire smile at him with her blue braces. What a [Edit: cruddy] birthday for her, he thought.

The guard, who called himself Mike, listened to Trent's quiet invitation to carpool up to Tulsa. By now the sound of sirens didn't stop outside, and they howled all around without moving. Trent didn't want to get stuck in that gridlock, but his feet itched to move north. It always felt like he had a bungee cable attached between June Claire and himself, and right now that cable was contracting. Unfortunately, Mike refused.

“Scenarios,” he said, raising two fingers. “One: This is a short failure that's gonna cost a lot of money, but soon the grid will come back on. When that happens, it's better to stay here for a few hours and let cleanup crews work on the highways. Otherwise you're just feeding the problem. Two: the power doesn't come back for a long time. In that case, the chaos out there only gets worse. In a car on those streets you'll get a few miles max before you run out of gas, and in the dark you'll get run over or killed trying to walk. You wouldn't have food, water, or shelter. Here, we have water, snacks that don't need a microwave, bathrooms, even showers. Blankets, too.”

Trent wished that Mike wasn't so right. He needed the man's car; his own ran on nearly empty. He'd planned on filling it up when he left the travel plaza. Trent thought. He had a gun in the glovebox. Mike didn't need to come along; Trent only needed the man's keys. He looked at the crowd of customers and employees. They had organized into four groups and were passing out water bottles, fleeces, and car pillows. The assistant manager took orders for the cooked food that needed to get eaten immediately. A few people grumbled that they wanted to get on the road, but the only person who left was a diabetic local woman who could walk home and needed her insulin.

It hurt like pulling out fishhooks from his gut, but Trent left the door and joined the group to help pass out supplies. He would see June Claire when this all blew over, but for now the Fill and Truck would work.