The Apocalypse Club (12 page)

The plan had been fairly straightforward. Violet had explained it to us one night at our headquarters.

“I think we’ve established that we can’t go after the Weather Station directly because the security’s too tight,” she said. We were hunkered down in a corner of the old warehouse as rain hammered the leaky metal roof overhead. There were so many holes in the roof that there were only a couple of places inside that you could sit without being subject to the whim of the elements. In some places, the holes were so big that water gushed down in torrents. It pooled in so many places that crossing the floor without soaking your sneakers was impossible.

“So you say,” Max said. He did not like being usurped as the chief tactician and was inclined to be surly during planning meetings.

“Hey, you want to go in the front door with guns blazing, be my guest,” Violet said.

“No one’s saying we want to do that,” I interjected.

“Don’t need guns for a job like this,” Max muttered under his breath. I was tempted to ask him exactly what kind of a job he thought we would need guns for, but decided against it because it might cause him to think of one.

Since we couldn’t go after the station, we’d go after the power source. Through her online research, Violet had been able to identify a nondescript transformer on a hill 300 yards from the station as its main power source. If we took that out, the station would go down.

“You don’t even have to blow it up,” Violet said. “All you need to do is trick it into thinking that the station isn’t there.”

“And how do we do that?” I asked.

Violet pulled what looked like a USB stick out of her bag. “Simple. Open the box and plug this connector into port B122A. It’s preloaded with code that will tell the transformer to shut itself off.”

I was impressed, but wary. “That’s awesome! Are you sure, though? How do you know it’ll work?”

“I’m sure,” she said with a smile that radiated absolute confidence.

“How do we get into the box?” Max asked.

“Well,” she said, “the door’s only held closed by a teeny-weeny little padlock. I’m sure two such highly trained commandoes as yourselves will have no problem with that. A simple bolt cutter should do the job.”

“And you’re sure there’s no security on the thing?” I asked, looking at the stick she handed me. It was slightly larger than a USB, matte black, and had a tiny row of lights that ran down one side. It didn’t look like anything an average teenager would be able to pick up at Radio Shack. Where on earth did she get this thing? I wanted to know, but wasn’t entirely sure I would like the answer.

“None,” she said. “Whole operation should take you less than five minutes. As long as you don’t leave any fingerprints behind, they’ll never even know you were there.”

I stopped turning the device around in my hands, rubbed it quickly on my shirt, and stuffed it in my pocket. I made a mental note to give it a more thorough cleaning later. Did I have a pair of gloves that I could use for tricky detail work? My winter ones would be too thick. What about dish gloves? No – they were yellow. That would look stupid.

“So we’re out on the box,” Max observed. “Where will you be?”

“I’ll be at home,” Violet said. “I’ll monitor the networks to make sure they’re not on to you. We’ll keep in touch by radio.”

We elected to go the following Friday at midnight. I borrowed a hand-held bolt cutter from my dad’s toolbox, but was unable to locate any decent gloves, so I had to go with the dish gloves. If I tucked them in under my sleeve, they didn’t look quite as bad, I thought. Max, however, disagreed.

“The fuck you wearing?” he hissed when he climbed out his bedroom window and met me in the backyard of his mother’s house. “This is war, not bath time for your goddamn hamster!”

“Give me a break,” I said. “I couldn’t find anything else. Besides, you’re not exactly Sergeant Rock.”

Max, I noticed, was wearing his mother’s gardening gloves. Even in the darkness, it wasn’t hard to see that they were emerald green and had an imprint of purple and pink geraniums.

“Never mind that,” he said. “At least they’re heavy duty. You remember the stick?”

“Fuck! I left it in my desk!”

“I don’t believe this! Of all the –”

“Relax! Of course I brought it,” I said, pulling it out of my pocket as proof. “Got the bolt cutters, too.”

“Okay.” He took the walkie-talkie off his belt. “This is BO-two-two-four to BO-Central. Come in, BO-Central.”

I heard Violet’s voice crackle through the cheap plastic receiver. “At no point did I agree to be called BO-Central.”

“Do you read?” Max said, not trying to hide the impatience in his voice. From experience, I knew that he tended to be the most snappish and stressed right at the start of an operation.

“You two can stink things up as much as you like,” Violet said. “But leave me out of it.”

“It’s just a radio code name!” Max protested.

“Then you can call me Isis,” Violet said. “Or Eurydice. I would also accept Hatshepsut.”

Max took his finger off the transmit button and unleashed a growling string of invective through clenched teeth. Then, pressing the button: “Two-two-four to Central. Do. You. Read. Me?”

A sigh. “I suppose ‘Central’ will have to do. Where are you idiots now?”

“Leaving primary embarkation point now,” Max said.

“Okay, so you’re in your backyard. Call me again when you get there.” There was a crunching sound. Was she eating potato chips? “And try not to fuck this one up like last time.”

“Roger that,” Max said, looking like he wanted to say a lot more but was refraining from doing so out of a stalwart sense of professionalism. “Two-two-four out.” Max stuck the walkie-talkie back on his belt and nodded to me. “Let’s move out.”

The electrical box was 3.2 kilometres away. The fastest way to get there without being observed was to cut through Royal City Park. During the day, the place would be crowded with kids on the play equipment or rec teams using the soccer and baseball fields, but as it was midnight, the place was deserted with the exception of a small crowd of university students taking a shortcut to the downtown bars; none of them paid us any attention. Since most of our trip would be off-road, we had decided that our bikes were the most efficient mode of transport. Max had tried to get me to paint mine matte black, but it was only a year and a half old and I had refused. I was pleased to see that he had decided against painting his, too. It was bright red and, although older than mine, it looked newer because he treated it with more care than the Hope Diamond.

He had, however, rubbed what looked like black shoe polish on his cheeks and forehead as some sort of camouflage and strongly encouraged me to do the same.

“What are you gonna say if a cop were to stop you looking like that?” I asked. “That you’re late for a revival performance of
The Jazz Singer
?”

“If I wear this, no cop will ever actually spot me,” Max said. “It reduces the glare. You can’t argue with science.”

“No, but I can argue with stupid.”

“All right,” he snapped. “Get caught. See if I care.”

We biked through the park without incident and made our way around the woodland path behind the toboggan hill that would lead to the river. We crossed the river on the pedestrian bridge next to the pumping station and made our way between the electrical towers to our final destination, which sat on a hill overlooking the rapidly expanding suburbs of the south end. Most of it had been rolling hills and countryside only five years before. From up here, it looked like a model railway village of empty streets under green lights.

It was a cool night for June and I was glad I had decided to bring my jacket – which, I was happy to point out to Max, was black. I could just make him out up ahead of me, a dark silhouette bobbing up and down as we made our way up the gentle incline. After about 50 yards, the grade got sharply steeper and we decided to climb off our bikes and push them the rest of the way. We leaned our bikes against a tree and walked over to the box. It was an ordinary green box with a yellow ID number stencilled on the side. An infographic warning that looked like a stork dropping a bowling ball was pasted next to that. I guessed that was some sort of warning message designed to keep people from doing what we were just about to do, although I had no idea how this image was supposed to communicate that. I guess the stickers were cheaper than translating the words “Do Not Open” into eight different languages.

Max took a pair of binoculars out of his backpack and peered across the river valley at the Weather Station, about 200 yards away. He stared down at it for a couple of minutes, still breathing heavily from our climb.

“There it is,” he said. “You ready?”

“Yep,” I said, feeling not in the least bit ready. We had gotten lucky with the truck. I couldn’t help but think our chances of getting that lucky again were remote. It was all I could manage to keep myself from dropping the bolt cutters and running back down the hill as fast as I could go.

Max took the walkie-talkie off his belt. “This is two-two-four to Central. Come in, Central.”

He let go of the transmit button and heard only static. He waited a few seconds and then tried the message again.

“Central, this is BO-two-two-four. You there?”

Hissssssssssss.

“Maybe we’re out of range,” I suggested, pointing to the walkie-talkie.

“These are supposed to be good for distances up to five kilometres!” Max said. “I ordered ’em online. I was very careful about checking the specs!”

I was about to suggest that maybe the specs were wrong or they had sent the wrong model when Violet’s voice crackled through the speaker.

“Sorry, guys!” she said. “You gotta go, you gotta go, though. What’s up?”

Max cleared his throat. “Central, this is two-two-four. We have reached the primary objective.”

There was more crunching. “Finally! You guys get lost or something? I’ve watched practically a whole season of
The Wire
since we last talked.”

Max took a deep breath and muttered something I couldn’t hear. “Repeat, Central. This is two-two-four. We have reached our primary objective.”

“Well, a hearty huzzah to you then, two-two-four,” she said. “Nobody knows you’re up there except for yours truly. Have at ’er.”

Max gave me a puzzled look. “Roger that, Central.” He clipped the walkie-talkie back to his belt. “You ready?”

I nodded. The two of us started walking toward the green box like it was a bull that might decide at any moment to charge us. I pulled out the bolt cutters. The padlock was small – like something a kid would put on a tackle box. I took it in my left hand, extended the cutters, and clipped it in one easy motion. Max opened the lid and pulled out a small Maglite, flicking it on to reveal a rabbit’s warren of cables and switches.

“There it is!” he whispered, pointing. I could see the numbering on the slot: B122A. I took the stick out of my pocket and, after a moment’s hesitation, plugged it into the slot. We both sat and stared at it for a moment as, one by one, the lights on the side of the stick lit up. It looked so much like a bomb arming itself that I felt a powerful urge to run.

Max jumped up and grabbed the walkie-talkie. “The package is delivered, Central! Repeat: the package is delivered!”

Violet’s voice crackled back through the static. This time there was no teasing or joking in her voice. “I can see that, gentlemen. Stand by.”

I ran to watch over Max’s shoulder as he trained his binoculars on the Weather Station. It was close enough that I could see it, although not with the same level of detail. I thought about demanding a turn with the binoculars but knew I’d just be wasting my breath. Max would never give them up and we’d spend the next five minutes arguing over the damn things instead of watching the Station shut down.

Except it didn’t appear to be shutting down – if anything, it was coming to life.

I could see two large panels on the roof tilt open and at least three large satellite dishes rise up into the air on one side while what looked like a large telescope extended from the other. The satellite dishes rotated into place until they were pointing almost straight into the sky. The telescope rose even higher and began to rotate in slow circles. An ominous electric hum started getting louder by the moment.

I knew one thing. This was definitely not what we were expecting would happen.

I grabbed the walkie-talkie and hit the transmit button. “It’s me! The Station is not shutting down!” I yelled. “I repeat – the Station is not shutting down!”

I could barely hear Violet’s voice over the strange, alien humming. “Relax, boys. Just stay right where you are. This won’t take but a minute.”

I tore my eyes away from the Station for a moment and looked up into the sky. The moon and stars were gone, replaced by a monster swirl of black and green clouds.

Where in the hell did that come from? I wondered. The wind was picking up, too. There hadn’t even been a breeze when we rode up here, and now suddenly I was being forced to steady myself against a tree to keep from being blown off my feet.

“What is this?” Max said.

“I don’t know,” I said. “But it sure as hell doesn’t look like we just turned it off!”

I was reasonably sure of two things at that point: what was happening wasn’t good; and what we had done was in some way responsible for it. I ran back to the box. I was able to see the stick thanks to the glowing lights on the side. I reached in and yanked it out, throwing it on the ground like it was toxic.

Nothing happened.

Or, rather, things suddenly got a whole hell of a lot worse.

Max and I watched in horrified awe as the first of the black funnel clouds descended out of the sky and touched down. Then another. And another. They looked like giant moving skyscrapers of doom. I had never seen an actual tornado before other than on TV and I have to say that watching them on TV is like the difference between playing with a rubber duck in the bathtub and being attacked by a Great White shark in the open ocean. One is mildly entertaining and the other one will kill you so hard that no one will ever find any trace of your body.