One Second After [14]
"Excuse me. Excuse me!"
John looked over again to the fence that Ben had just scaled. A woman, well dressed, dark gray business suit, with shiny shoulder-length blond hair, was coming up the grassy slope, walking a bit awkwardly in her high heels.
"Ma'am?"
"Can you tell me what's going on?"
As she approached John, half a dozen more got out of their stalled cars and started towards the fence as well.
"I'm sorry, ma'am, I think I know just about as much as you do."
"I was just driving along," and she pointed back to the stalled BMW 330 on the westbound side, "and the engine just went off, the same with everyone else out here."
"I don't know for sure," John said, now choosing his words carefully as he watched more people approaching, four of them men in their late twenties, maybe early thirties, big guys, looked like construction workers. Some sort of instinct began to kick in as he watched them come up behind the woman.
"Hey, buddy, how come your car's running?" one of them asked. The man speaking was nearly as tall as John, stocky and well built. "Don't know why it's running; it just is."
"Well, it seems strange, don't you think? All these cars out here dead and that old junker still running." "Yeah, guess it does seem strange." "What did you do to make it run?"
"It just turned on, that's all," John said quietly, fixing the man with his gaze and not letting it drop.
"Sir, can you give me a lift into town?" the woman asked.
He looked at the fence that Ben had scaled with such ease. John caught a glimpse of Ben going over the chain-link fence on the far side of the highway and then trotting up the road towards his house.
More and yet more people were approaching, an elderly couple, a woman leading a child of about six, a couple of teenagers, an overweight man in an expensive business suit, collar open and tie pulled down. A trucker over in the eastbound lane was out of his rig, slowly walking towards John.
"Ma'am, I don't see how you'll get over that fence," John said, nodding to the chain-link fence that separated them. "It's just over a mile to Exit
64," and he pointed west. "Don't get off at Exit 65; there's just a convenience store there."
He pointed to the lane for Exit 65 just a couple of hundred yards away that arced off the interstate just before the road curved up over a bridge spanning the railroad tracks.
"Go to Exit 64. You can walk it in twenty minutes. There's two motels there, one of them a Holiday Inn with a good restaurant as well. You should be able to still get a room till this thing clears up."
"John?" It was Jen, standing behind him, whispering. "Help her."
He let his hand drift behind his back and put his hand out forcefully, extended, a signal for Jen to shut up.
In many ways, eight years here had indeed changed him. Women were addressed as "ma'am" and doors were held open for them, no matter what their age. If a man spoke inappropriately to a woman in public and another man was nearby, there would be a fight brewing. The woman in the business suit looked at him appealingly. To refuse her went against a lifetime of thinking and conditioning.
Hell, there was even a touch of something going on here that he never would have dreamed of but ten minutes ago. Since Mary had died, there had been a few brief flirtations, even one brief affair with a professor at the state university, but down deep his heart was never in it; Mary was still too close. The woman on the other side of the fence was attractive, professional looking, early to mid-thirties; a quick glance to her left hand showed no ring. An earlier incarnation of himself, before Mary ... he'd have cut the fence down to get to this woman and act as the rescuer. John was almost tempted now to do so.
But there was that "something else" now. A gut instinct that ran deeper. Something had gone wrong, what, he still wasn't sure, but there were too many anomalies, with the power