Blackout - By Tom Barber Page 0,33
and spa retreats scattered all over the community. Residentially, the census in 2010 revealed there were just over 17,000 separate households in Mclean, and despite being a predominately government town as people put it, at that time in the morning most of the residents were still asleep. The buses for the high schools in the area weren't due to roll around until just after 8 am, so it was still that blissful last hour in bed just before everyone had to get up and get going for the day.
But one young man was already up and had been for almost two hours, riding his bike through a series of suburbs and maple tree-lined streets. He worked the paper-round five days a week, the easiest money he'd ever make, thirty five bucks per shift. He was fourteen and hyperactive so he was usually up by this time in the day anyway, and much to the delight of his parents he figured he might as well make some money if he was already up and about.
He worked ten streets on his route, usually about twenty houses each side, so that added up to a lot of newspapers. Four hundred and four, to be exact. He'd worked out that he could carry eighty rolled up papers in the bag on his side, so he normally had to make a few stops back at the store to reload so he could finish his shift. When he'd started out, he had carefully tucked each paper in each letterbox or walked up to drop it on the porch, but lately he had started throwing them at the porches instead and had got pretty good. A friend of his who worked another route nearby for the same newspaper vendor had gone on vacation, so the kid on the bike had doubled up, offering to do his friend's route for an extra thirty five dollars. Seventy bucks earned by the time he ate breakfast and got on the school-bus.
He had just turned down 41st Street, a stretch not on his normal route but one he was covering for his friend, and was a third of his way along, slinging the papers left and right, each one landing on each porch, some of them not even hitting the front doors. As he moved down the street, he slung a paper to his left. It twirled through the air and landed. He glanced over to see he'd hit the mark as he pedalled past.
Suddenly, he pulled on the brakes, skidding to a halt, planting his feet either side of the bike.
The houses on the street all looked quiet, everyone inside still asleep or already out the door, but something had caught his eye. Being a wealthy area and with residents constantly out of town or on vacation, his boss at the paper gave him a new list every shift of houses to miss on his route, people who had cancelled their paper whilst they were away. However, this front porch had a stack of newspapers on it. No one seemed to have noticed. It looked like there were over twenty there, hidden by the porch walls, heaped up by the front door.
The kid stepped off his bike, leaving it to one side, and walked down the path towards the house. It looked like most of the others on the street, a box-shaped, two floored brick house with a side garage to the left. The grass on the lawn was long, like it hadn’t been cut in a while, and most of the curtains were drawn.
Walking up the path, the kid arrived at the porch and looked down at the stack uncertainly, pausing just in case whoever lived inside pulled open the curtains and started shouting at him.
But there was no movement from inside.
The curtains were still.
He knelt down and started rummaging through the pile. Eventually, he came up with a newspaper dated from March.
It was delivered three weeks ago to the day, Thursday.
What the hell?
He was used to the odd heap, maybe six or seven papers for someone who had forgotten to cancel for the week, but he'd never seen a pile this high. Glancing back down the path, he saw the mailbox was jammed full of mail too, spilling out of the metal box.
Placing the paper back down on the pile carefully, the kid turned and walked back down the path. He'd report what he’d seen when he finished his route.
However, something about this place was making him uneasy.
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