The Rule of Three (2 page)

“My phone isn’t working,” Todd said.

“You know there are lots of dead spots in this school.”

“No, I mean it’s as blank as the computer screens.” He showed it to me.

“Your battery is dead. Your phone needs that magical substance called electricity to—”

“My phone is dead, too,” a girl said.

“Same here,” somebody else added.

All around us people who had overheard were pulling out their phones. There was a chorus of disbelief and upset. It was strange how they seemed more upset about their phones not working than there being no electricity.

I pulled out my phone, just to confirm things. It was off—as per the school rules—but when I pushed the button to turn it on, it remained blank. I knew my phone was fully charged. The cell phone towers probably needed electricity to work. Is that why we weren’t even getting a screen? No, that didn’t make sense. Even without the towers there should have been power to run other apps.

“Can I have your attention!” Our principal was on the stage with a bullhorn. “Please!” he called out. “We need everybody to listen carefully … Please stop talking!”

There was a murmur of conversation that faded to a semisilence, an acceptable level of cooperation.

“As you are all aware, we have a power failure,” he started. “We’re assuming that it’s probably countywide, as there is a complete breakdown in telephone service, both landlines and cell phones, which must be related to the power failure.”

The crowd noise went up as those who hadn’t noticed previously all pulled out their cell phones to confirm what he’d said.

“Quiet down, people! The sooner we can finish here, the sooner you can all go home!”

A cheer went up from the crowd and then applause.

“Silence, please!” The noise faded. “Whatever the issue is, I’m confident it is being addressed and will be corrected shortly.”

For some reason I had a feeling it wasn’t going to be so simple. I was still thinking about why the batteries in the laptops had gone dead.

“We’ve decided to cancel final period today and let you all go home early.”

A cheer went up from the audience once again.

He raised a hand to quiet everyone. “You can stay here in the gym to wait for the buses. If you’re driving or walking, keep in mind there will probably be no functioning traffic lights, so please be careful. Dismissed.”

There was an even bigger cheer as we all started for the exits.

2

The flood of students spilled out through every available door of the gym. With my dad away, I guess this meant I was picking up the twins at the elementary school, as I knew my mother would be asked to stay on duty with the power out. They’d be keeping all officers on duty, and as captain of the precinct she would be tied up completely until this was resolved. And since no power meant no flying lesson, my afternoon was pretty much shot anyway.

“Do you need to get anything from your locker?” I asked Todd.

“Nope. I guess that essay for Dixon will be due tomorrow, but we have study hall beforehand to finish it up.”

“I have to give you marks for being consistent.”

“All I need is a ride home. Hey, do you see her?”

“Keep your voice down,” I hissed. “I see her.”

Just exiting the building ahead of us was Lori—holding hands with Chad. I felt myself cringe. Something that nice shouldn’t be touching something that bad. I didn’t dislike many people, but Chad was in that group. A rich, snobby, squinty-eyed lacrosse player two grades ahead, he didn’t like me either. As Todd had pointed out more than once, it didn’t take a genius to figure out I had a thing for Lori. So far she hadn’t noticed, or if she had, she pretended that she hadn’t.

“I don’t know what she sees in him,” I said.

“Let’s ask her. Hey, Lori!” Todd screamed.

Lori and Chad turned around, and I wanted to find a rock to crawl under.

“I was wondering,” Todd called out as we caught them. “We were
both
wondering—”

“What you got on the history test!” I exclaimed, cutting him off. Lori, Todd, and I had the same third-period class.

“An eighty-nine,” she said, and flashed us a smile. I felt my feet get mushy.

“That’s great,” Todd said, “but I was really wondering—”

“If you wanted to join our study group for the finals,” I broke in again. Todd laughed but I ignored him. “I know it’s early, but it’s important to get these things sorted out.”

“Umm, that would be great,” she said.

Chad shot me a dirty look. He was neither impressed nor deceived.

“Good. See you tomorrow. Come on, Todd, we better go now.”

“But—”

“If we don’t leave now, somebody is going to be
walking
home, if you understand what I’m saying.”

“I understand. Okay, then, let’s get going. See you two
ladies
tomorrow.”

Lori smiled, and Chad scowled but was smart enough not to say anything back. Todd was younger but bigger, and he had a well-earned reputation for being quick-tempered, tough, and willing to fight just about anybody. It wouldn’t have helped Chad’s cool to be beaten up by a guy two years younger. They walked off.

“I think that’s part of the answer to your question,” Todd said, gesturing to Chad’s BMW.

“I don’t think so. She’s got too much going for her to be impressed by somebody’s car. You’d have to be pretty shallow to let something like that influence you.”

“Hey, watch what you’re saying. If he wasn’t such a complete tool,
I’d
become his friend just to ride in that car. Look at the piece of junk you drive.”

“It’s not junk, it’s a
classic
.” I unlocked the door.

“A classic is a ’57 Corvette, not an ’81 Omega,” he said.

I reached over and unlocked his door. “It’s a ’70-something Omega and it
is
a classic. By definition, any car that’s older than twenty-five years is a classic. Do the math.”

“I won’t be doing any math until next semester, when I have to take it as a subject.”

I turned the key and the car groaned but didn’t want to start. “Come on, come on.”

“I bet you Chad’s car will start,” Todd said.

“So will mine.”

“She’d better or I’m going to have to try and hail down Chad and get a—”

The engine roared to life. I adjusted the rearview mirror, got ready to back out, and … saw only people standing by their cars. I eased out and for once wasn’t fighting to edge my way through other cars. No vehicle was moving. Not one. Kids were opening car hoods all over the place. What was happening? I stopped and rolled down my window. There were voices, but no engines racing other than mine.

“This is weird,” Todd said. “What’s going on?”

“I’m not sure.”

I put the Omega into park, and Todd and I climbed out. All of the cars were dead except mine. Then I saw an old beat-up minivan slowly inching through the crowd.

“This can’t be happening,” Todd said. “It’s not possible that all the vehicles in the parking lot stopped working at once except for two old wrecks.”

A thought jolted me. “It’s the computers.”

“What have the computers got to do with the cars not working?”

“A modern car has more computers on it than the space shuttle. If something has shut down the computers in the school, they must have shut them down out here in the parking lot.”

“And your car, because it’s as old as the car Fred Flintstone drove, doesn’t have any computers,” Todd said.

“Exactly.” I had a brief flash of what all this meant. This was bad. Really bad. “We have to roll. We need to pick up my brother and sister. Get back in the car.”

“Hold on—that still leaves you one empty seat,” Todd said. “Lori!” he screamed, his voice cutting through the rising tide of voices that filled the parking lot. She was standing next to Chad’s car and turned to face us.

“Can we give you a ride?” he yelled.

She smiled, nodded, and came toward us—but not before giving Chad a little kiss goodbye. That made my skin crawl.

Todd held open the passenger door, she climbed in, and he got into the back. This was great, I thought, that she was right here and—

But then my head snapped back to the present. Whatever was happening might be kind of serious—at least more serious than the principal was letting on. Either he was trying to downplay things or he didn’t know … Wait … He didn’t know about the cars or he wouldn’t have mentioned us all driving home or getting on the buses.

“We’ve got to make one stop to pick up my brother and sister.”

“Of course. I just don’t understand what’s happening,” Lori said. “This is all so unreal.”

“I think it has to do with computer systems,” Todd said. “Cars have lots of computers in them. Well, except for old cars like this one.”

I shot Todd a look in the mirror.

“That’s what Adam thinks, anyway,” he said.

I nodded. “The computers control everything. Fuel pump, transmission, electrical system, power brakes and steering, locks, windows.” We started moving, and everybody stared at us as we rolled by. They looked confused, amused, and worried. At the exit, there were no other cars waiting to turn out.

And then the three of us looked beyond the school lot.

“What a sight,” Todd said.

The entire road had become a long parking lot. There were clusters of cars at lights—lights that weren’t working. Standing around the cars were more people—equally confused, but also angry-looking. An old truck—again almost as old as my car—rumbled along slowly, weaving past the stalled cars like they were pylons. The driver looked at me and waved. I gave a little wave back as if we were members of some secret club. I moved over to the far side of the road to get around cars that had clumped together blocking the way. This was eerie.

“So you think this is some sort of computer problem,” Lori said, “like a virus?”

“Yeah, a virus of some kind. A
bad
virus.”

“But how was it spread so that it infected the cars?” Todd asked.

“I have no idea. Maybe through the airwaves.”

“You mean like Wi-Fi and the Internet?” he asked.

“Well, maybe that’s how the computers at school got infected. But the car computers aren’t hooked to the net. Maybe it spread through the GPS, or satellite radio, maybe even OnStar systems,” I suggested.

“That makes sense. Almost every car has one of those,” Todd agreed.

“But not all of them. It has to be something else as well.” And then the answer came to me. “
Every
car has a radio. It could be through AM or FM radio signals. That could be how the virus arrived and then infected the computer systems.”

“Do you know what this reminds me of?” Todd asked.

I had no idea. This was like nothing I’d ever seen or heard about.

“What?” Lori asked.

“This is going to sound stupid.”

“Look around,” I said. “Compared to what’s happening, nothing could sound stupid.”

“It reminds me of one of those movies where the only human beings in the world drive around in a car with zombies chasing them.” He paused. “Okay, now tell me if that isn’t stupid?”

I shook my head. “Not stupid. I think I even understand.”

I came up to an intersection, easing through the stalled vehicles, my progress marked by looks of awe or surprise from those standing beside their disabled rides. I’d gone from driving an old piece of crap to piloting an object of wonder.

3

Rachel and Danny followed me out the doors of their school. The principal had been thrilled to have me take them. He had hundreds of kids with no school buses and almost nobody to pick them up. Taking two fourth graders off his hands made his job that much easier.

The kids were still thinking it all had to do with the power going off. I was positive the power going off wasn’t the cause of the problem, but the
result
of the problem.

“I hope everything is still blacked out tomorrow,” Danny said. “It would be sort of like a snow day without all the snow.”

I laughed. Maybe it really was nothing serious and I was overthinking all of this and it would be fixed in a few hours. That made sense. Power failures happened, and then things were repaired. That’s how it worked. Except then, when the lights went out, there usually was a storm or something, knocking down power lines and causing outages. I also knew this was more than just about the power, but I didn’t say anything. There was no point in worrying the twins by opening up questions when I didn’t have answers.

“Our teacher told us about a blackout that hit the eastern half of North America a few years ago,” Danny said.

“I kind of remember that,” Lori said. “It was freaky and a little bit scary.”

“You have me and Adam, so there’s nothing to be ascared of,” Todd said.

“Ascared?” Danny asked. “Who taught you how to talk?”

“Great, I’m being disrespected by a fourth grader,” Todd said.

“A smart fourth grader,” Danny said.

Rachel laughed. “Not that smart.”

“Do you think this blackout could be that big?” Danny asked me.

“I’m not sure about anything,” I said.

“Our teacher said that it took three days to fix that big one. Maybe there won’t be school for the rest of the week,” Danny said. “Wouldn’t that be amazing?”

“That
would
be amazing,” Todd agreed.

*   *   *

Nothing could be more amazing than what we were witnessing. People had started to abandon their vehicles as they realized that they weren’t going to start up, that there was no way to call for help, and that even if they could make a call there was nobody to help them since the emergency vehicles would be stalled, too. People who would have been sitting in their cars were on their feet walking. This was strange to see, because nobody in our suburbs ever really walked anywhere.

There were streams of people hiking down the middle of the street—more obstacles in my way. Most people just looked at us, but others waved and a couple stuck out their thumbs to try to hitch a ride from us.