witness until that witness had been thoroughly interviewed and had made statements. There had to be so much crazy shit going on that the police couldn’t stop all the holes, and that thought was positively terrifying.
As of this morning, the story of Philadelphia and its “mass hysteria” had been starting to go public—hence the calls from my mom and sister—and I figured the current situation was going to add tons of fuel to the fire. I glanced over at our answering machine, surprised it wasn’t blinking itself silly with messages from my mom and my sister both. They had to be worried, and my mom would want to get me on that train to Boston ASAP. Or maybe at this point a train was too slow. Maybe she wanted me on an airplane, this very night.
Feeling yet another chill of unease, I picked up the phone and wasn’t entirely surprised to find the line was dead. I then tried my cell phone, but though I could see that I had a connection, I couldn’t get a call through. Again, not entirely surprising. Practically everyone in Philly was probably trying to call someone or being called by someone. There’s only so much traffic the airwaves can handle. Piper gave it a shot with her phone, just in case, but she had no more luck than I had.
“Do you think this is the start of the zombie apocalypse?” Piper asked, but she sounded too scared to make the joke funny.
I laughed anyway, a nervous giggle that momentarily threatened to run away with me. “No sign of zombies yet,” I said, “but I’m going to double-check all our doors and windows, just in case.”
There was no way any of our doors and windows were unlocked—Dad would never stand for that—but at least it gave Piper and me something to do other than brood and speculate. We checked each one together, wiggling each lock to make sure it was fully in place. Bob followed us every step of the way, practically glued to my leg, so that I almost tripped over him a couple of times. He wasn’t usually this clingy—actually, he wasn’t usually clingy at all—and I figured he was once again picking up on our anxiety.
“Maybe we should be watching the news,” Piper said when we were finished. “I’m not sure I want to know what’s happening out there, but not knowing is driving me crazy.”
I agreed with her on both counts. I wasn’t worried about my dad, because the police commissioner had no reason to go out in the field, but I of course knew a lot of his friends and coworkers. People who would be responding to any emergency calls that happened to come in and would therefore be out on the streets with the madness. I hoped all of them were all right, but without keeping an eye on the news, I wouldn’t know the scale of whatever was going on. No, I probably wasn’t going to see anything even remotely comforting, but I preferred to know.
Piper, Bob, and I were all on the stairs between the first and second floors, heading back down to the living room to park in front of the TV, when the lights went out.
“Oh crap,” I whispered under my breath, while Piper said something far more colorful.
We both brought out our cell phones and used their feeble blue light to guide us down the rest of the stairs, and then I went searching for candles. We didn’t have a lot of power outages here in Center City, and when we did, they didn’t last very long, but Dad was always prepared.
I found candles and matches in one of the kitchen drawers, and Piper and I lit enough of them so it wasn’t pitch dark in the living room when we resumed our places on the sofa.
“What are the chances the power company will send someone out tonight to fix whatever’s wrong?” Piper asked.
We both knew the answer. We were just going to have to hunker down in the darkness and wait for morning. I wasn’t sure when or even if Dad was going to come home, but I knew he wasn’t going to turn right around and drive Piper back to her own home. Not tonight.
“Guess you’re staying the night,” I said to her. “Maybe we can pretend this is a slumber party.”
“Oh yeah, let’s change into our nighties and talk about boys,” Piper responded, showing that her sense of humor was still