Ryan Westfield - Final Chaos

Well, it would take a few moments, probably. Backup generates didn’t come on instantly. At least as far as she knew.

“Nothing but progress!” screamed the man.

Aly tried to ignore it. She closed her eyes and tried to focus on her breathing. She’d taken a meditation course not long ago in an attempt to deal with her marital problems. She’d thought that focusing on being calmer would help with the arguments. Of course, it’d done nothing.

And it did nothing now.

Her heart still raced. Her skin still felt clammy.

She opened her eyes again after only a few moments.

The lights, of course, were still off.

There were sounds now. Shouts from the police officers. Maybe the secretary, too. Aly didn’t know.

A flashlight beam flicked on somewhere in the hallway. Aly watched as it moved along the hallway at a high speed. Someone was running.

Another flashlight. Someone else running.

“What’s going on?” cried out Aly, unable to stay silent any longer.

No one answered her.

“The cars aren’t working!” someone yelled out. A loud, deep, commanding voice. “We’ve got to go on foot!”

“The radios are down, too,” came another voice.

The cars and radios weren’t working? That sounded like more than just a power outage. Shouldn’t they have kept running?

The flurry of activity only lasted a few minutes.

When it was all over, the entire station was completely silent. All the police had left, letting the door slam behind them.

Aly was left alone in her dark, silent cell.

The only thing she could hear was the ragged breathing of her cell neighbor. And she knew it wouldn’t be long before he screamed again.

“You going to have that custom job ready for this afternoon, Jess?” said Bruce, her boss.

“It’s Jessica, not Jess, Jessie, or anything else you can come with,” said Jessica.

Bruce just laughed. “Just have it ready by this afternoon.”

“You gave me one day to do it.”

“He’s paying top dollar for this. So he gets what he wants.”

Jessica said nothing as she watched Bruce walk away.

Sure, Bruce was getting top dollar for the custom bike, but she wasn’t getting a penny more per hour.

That was the way it was, though, and she needed the job to pay her way through school.

She’d worked at the bike shop for a full two years now. When she’d graduated high school, she didn’t have the money to even attend community college. At eighteen, her parents had thrown her to the curb along with all her stuff and she’d had to support herself ever since.

She’d never begrudged them for it. She’d never really thought much about it, actually. She’d just done what she’d had to do and gotten a job.

Jessica made her way into the back of the bike shop where all the bikes were hanging from hooks in the ceiling. There were mountain bikes, road bikes, BMX bikes, and plenty of those in-between bikes that were so popular, the ones that weren’t really good for anything in particular.

Jessica found the titanium mountain bike hanging near the back, grabbed it, and took it down.

She’d gotten the new wheels on it yesterday, but the bike still needed some serious work. The bottom bracket would probably take the most time. While the frame was made of titanium, the components of the bottom bracket were steel, and there was no doubt in her mind that they’d rusted to hell over the years. It’d be a tough job.

“What’s up, Jessica?” said Tom, sauntering into the shop from the back door.

Jessica just gave him a brief nod as she lifted the bike up to the mechanic’s stand so she could work on it.

“You working on that vintage mountain bike?” said Tom, standing annoyingly close to Jessica, his messenger bag still slung over his shoulder.

Jessica didn’t answer him.

Tom was about Jessica’s age. But that was the end of what they had in common. Tom was a rich kid who went to the University of Rochester. He only worked at the bike shop for something to do, and so he could sound cool and interesting.

Jessica grabbed a bottom bracket wrench and started to work. The lock ring itself was rusted. She leaned down hard on the wrench, but it still wouldn’t budge.

“You didn’t do the bottom bracket yet?” said Tom, in his annoying voice. “That would have been the first thing I’d do.”

“When was the last time you did a bottom bracket overhaul on a bike this old?” said Jessica.

Tom said nothing.

“That’s what I thought,” she muttered.

Tom retreated into the bathroom, probably to check his Instagram account, which was full of the expensive bikes his parents had bought him over the years.

Jessica was still struggling with the wrench when the lights went off.

“What the hell?” yelled Tom, from behind the bathroom door.

She could hear him fumbling around in there.

Jessica wasted no time. She knew she had to get the work done on time, whether a breaker had blown or what.

She reached into her pocket for her cell phone. It was the cheapest unlocked smartphone that she’d found. It wasn’t like she had much disposable income at all, unlike Tom who could buy whatever he wanted.

She figured she could use the light on the phone to keep working. She’d hold the phone under her chin if she had to. She wasn’t going to risk losing her job, no matter how unfair the assignment was.

But her phone wouldn’t turn on.

Maybe the battery was dead.

“My phone’s not working!” yelled Tom from the bathroom.

That was weird. Both their phones weren’t working.

“You guys OK back there?” called out Bruce, from the front of the store. “I’m going to check the—shit!” It sounded like he’d crashed into a couple bikes on display. Jessica heard them fall over, making a loud crashing noise. Bruce swore and yelled in pain.

“You OK, Brucey?” yelled Tom.

“I’m fine. Just get the breaker, will you?”

“As soon as I can find my way out of this bathroom.”

Jessica was no wimp. She wasn’t scared of a little darkness. Or her phone turning off.

But the darkness did remind her of a difficult time. It hadn’t been that long ago. Almost two years to the day, when she’d been knocked off her bike in a dark alley at 11:00 PM. Two men had attacked her.

She didn’t like to remember the details. But suffice it to say, after that she decided that the best thing to do would be to make sure she’d never be a victim again.

And so she’d gotten into guns.

They weren’t considered cool for people like her, bike shop workers. Tom, for instance, would have freaked out if he’d known she’d had a gun. But then again, she’d never really cared much about what people had thought about her. And she was fine doing things her own way.

So she’d taken a gun safety training course, saved up her money, and purchased a Glock 42.

It was a relatively small gun, but still completely functional.

In its slim holster, she could slide it into the pocket of her jeans and no one would know it was there.

She’d gone the pocket-carry route because a holster wasn’t practical for her. The minute she got onto her bike, her shirt would invariably ride up a little, making it difficult to conceal a holster worn any other way than in her pocket.

Sure, she could have gone the ankle route, but she didn’t like the idea of having to reach down that far if she needed the Glock.

If her boss had known she was packing, she would have been fired on the spot. So she kept it on the down low.

Her boss was trying to get himself upright, but in the process he only knocked over more bikes.

“I found the door knob!” shouted Tom.