No Place For Heroes

Chapter 3 - No Reception

The bottle shop was busier than usual that day.  Weekdays were normally quiet, as most people worked.  But by ten that morning, I’d already served well over thirty customers, a new record. 

I assumed the power outage had prevented people from going to work.  It was certainly making my job harder; without the till, I had to put my maths skills to the test, jotting down every item purchased and working out the change in my head. 

People were starting to annoy me.

So I finally decided to find out what was going on.  Gary Foot, a guy who worked at the mine with my friend’s Dad, was the first familiar face to walk in.  He approached the counter to pay for his six-pack.  Like most men in this town, Gary proudly sported a generous beer belly and his skin had a permanently dirty look about it, kind of like a smoker can always be identified by an ominous yellow tinge.   

“You working today?” I asked.  It felt strange striking up a conversation like this; I rarely spoke to customers.   

“Yeh haven’t heard, then?”

“Heard what?”

“The bridge collapsed.  Nobody can get to the mine.”

My hand froze midway through scrawling Gary’s receipt.  I looked at him, suddenly noticing the anxious look on his face. 

“How’d the bridge collapse?”

“No idea,” Gary shrugged.  “But it was a pretty clean cut on both sides.  Whole road’s jus’ lyin’ there in the river in a dozen pieces.  Train line too.  Very strange.  An’ yeh know what else?  There’s a fence – a wire, electric fence goin’ right around the town.  It’s on the other side o’ the river … disappears into the bush, but we think it circles right around.”

Gary handed over the cash, which I took and placed in a bag without paying the slightest attention to what I was doing.

“An’ what’s even more bizarre –”

I held my breath; what else could there possibly be?

“ – is that flippin’ ball thing hoverin’ in the sky.”

“What?”

“Jeez, Adam, yeh walk around with yer eyes shut or somethin’?”

Gary gestured for me to follow him outside.  We stood in the open car park and Gary pointed to something in the distance.  It didn’t take me long to spot it: presumably located at the very edge of the town and soaring above the rows of houses was a thick cylindrical pole, atop of which perched a large black sphere.  To put it simply, it looked like a giant lollypop.  So random and – as Gary had described it – bizarre.  And it hadn’t been there this time yesterday … it may as well have sprouted from the ground overnight.

“What d’you think it is?” I asked, squinting at the peculiar structure. 

“No idea.  But it’s bloody weird, innit?  Must’ve been built jus’ las’ night.”

We stared at it in silence, mesmerised.  Then Gary said, “Well, better be gettin’ back home.  Wife’s a bit spooked, to tell the truth.”  

He hauled his beers under his arm and walked away.  I waved absently, my mind feeling strangely empty, unsure of what to make of all this.  After being blinded by the light outside, the shop felt a lot darker as I walked through the door. 

Perhaps I just wanted to be absolutely sure – to know the power hadn’t been restored during those brief few minutes I’d been outside – but for whatever reason I flicked the light switch as I walked past.  Of course, nothing happened.  Then, remembering something Mum had said that morning, I took out my mobile and pressed the round button at the bottom of the screen.  It seemed to be working fine.