Джеффри Дивер - Nothing Good Happens After Midnight - A Suspense Magazine Anthology

Ed ignored them as he picked up stuff for dinner. Then he went to the checkout line. He didn’t use the U-scan, because he wanted to keep the checkers employed. He got behind some nicely-dressed, forty-something guy who didn’t bother to unload his handcart. He just set it on the conveyer belt and let the cashier unload the cart for him. He was too busy talking on his phone.

A couple of shoppers got in line behind Ed.

With fascination and mounting contempt, he watched the man carry on his phone conversation while the cashier rang up his groceries. “Do you have a QFC card?” the young woman asked him. “Sir?”

He kept talking. Barely looking at her, he held up his index finger as if to indicate that he’d acknowledge her in a minute. She’d finished ringing up his items, but he hadn’t even reached for his wallet yet. Ed wondered what the guy was discussing on his phone that was so important. Did it really warrant holding up all the other customers in line behind him? Ed could see the cashier was getting exasperated with the guy. He wanted to tell him off. But he hated confrontations.

Then he remembered.

He had the Intruder.

Taking it out of his pocket, Ed pressed the button three times.

“Shit!” the guy bellowed, suddenly pitching his phone behind the counter. He shook his hand over and over as if he’d burned his fingers. “Goddamn it!”

The cashier thought he’d thrown his phone at her, and she laid into the guy: “Hey, what do you think you’re doing?”

He screamed back at her that his Smartphone had just given him a shock. He held up the checkout line even longer while he retrieved the phone and then threw a fit over the fact that it was now dead.

“That’s not my problem,” the cashier told him. “Are you going to pay for your items or what?”

The guy stormed out of the store without his groceries.

Ed couldn’t help smiling. It was a beautiful thing to see.

From then on, using the Intruder was easy — and so gratifying. It was like a triumph over rude, inconsiderate, self-important assholes everywhere.

It seemed the city was swarming with Intruder-worthy jerks. One of the sweetest victories for Ed was the encounter with a woman taking up the entire sidewalk with her Labrador retriever on a long leash. The dog crapped on the parkway. But the woman was too busy texting to stop and pick it up.

Ed even gave her a chance to redeem herself by politely inquiring: “Aren’t you going to clean up after your dog?”

She gave him a flutter of her hand as if to say “shoo,” and went back to texting.

Zapping her felt so good.

The phone seemed to leap from her grasp, and she let out a scream that sent her dog into a barking fit. Her phone landed in a pile of some other dog’s shit.

As Ed walked away, he heard her cursing furiously and the lab barking.

He also zapped four texters in a movie theater. The commotion he started was a lot more distracting than those glowing little screens in the darkened movie theater that always annoyed him. But in this case, the movie was only so-so; and it was utterly satisfying to watch each zapper-victim react. They jumped up from their seats. Drinks were spilled. Popcorn flew in the air.

Ed didn’t feel a bit sorry for them. They’d been told before the movie — during the previews — to turn off their cell phones. But did they pay attention? No.

The gym was a goldmine of Intruder-worthy self-involved creeps, especially those guys who remained on the weight machines like squatters, taking five or ten minute breaks while they texted or scrolled between reps. Ed really enjoyed zapping them. He got five people in a row — all lazily sitting or laying on the mats, focused on their phones. None of them had been stretching or exercising. Meanwhile, people like him were waiting for space to do their sit-ups. He zapped three more in the locker room — two texters and one fully-dressed clown who stood by his locker, talking on his phone, spitting distance from the sign that showed a cell phone inside a circle with a slash through it. They all had it coming. No one dared to shower at his gym anymore because of these cell phone jerks and guys taking selfies in the locker room. Ed felt like a freak every time he undressed to take a shower.

He returned to the gym two days later, and zapped sixteen more people.

Two days after that, on his next trip to the gym, Ed noticed someone on the staff had posted a hand-written sign at the check-in desk:

WARNING TO CELL PHONE USERS

Several members have reported getting shocked while using their phones in the workout areas and locker room. Phones have short-circuited. Management is investigating the problem & assumes no responsibility. USE YOUR PHONES AT YOUR OWN RISK! Use of electronic devices in the locker rooms is strictly prohibited.

But people didn’t pay attention to signs anymore. So there were still plenty of phone abusers in the gym — and two more in the locker room. Ed zapped them all.

The next time he went to the gym, the sign was printed up and laminated. The guy at the check-in desk was collecting phones, then tagging and bagging them. Too many gym members had complained or threatened to sue.

Ed noticed a similar sign posted at his neighborhood QFC — right by the one saying that pets weren’t allowed. He hadn’t realized just how many people he’d zapped in the supermarket, but apparently the number was significant. He noticed less people using their phones while shopping. People in the checkout lines were actually talking to each other — or to the cashiers.

After a while, at the gym, he found he didn’t have to wait to use the machines or the exercise mats.

Now he didn’t hesitate to zap the phone-abusers he encountered on the sidewalk — that included anyone not looking where they were going while texting; people on their phones walking their dogs; texting jaywalkers; and people texting while driving. He’d almost caused a few car accidents among the last group — or more accurately, the texting drivers almost caused the accidents. Didn’t they know it was against the law?

After two weeks, the local TV news reported on the “cell phone malfunctions” that plagued Seattle’s Capitol Hill neighborhood — along with some isolated incidents downtown, in Queen Anne, Ballard and Fremont. Cell phones were recalled and phone towers were tested. An article about it even popped up on page one of The Seattle Times.

Ed felt compelled to write The Times an email:

To the Editor:

Regarding those cell phone malfunctions reported by your newspaper. If you’re looking for a common link to all the instances of phones short-circuiting and shocking their users, don’t look at the phone brand or models or the signal towers. Look at the phone users. Ask them what they were doing when their phones malfunctioned. Ask them if they were using their phones in movie theaters or locker rooms or bathrooms or while driving. Ask them if they were being rude or obnoxious when they were on their phones. Ask them if they were ignoring the people around them or their own children or their dogs, because they couldn’t tear themselves away from their precious phones for a few minutes. The common link among all the reported ‘malfunction’ cases is that these scumbags all deserved what happened to them and their stupid phones. As long as there are inconsiderate phone users here in Seattle, phones will keep ‘malfunctioning.’ I promise you.

Sincerely,

He sent the email from a computer in the Ballard Public Library so it couldn’t be traced to him.

But as soon as he sent the damn thing, Ed regretted it. He’d just admitted to The Seattle Times that he was behind all these people getting hurt and all that property damage. Were there cameras inside or outside the Ballard Public Library? Could the police track him down as the “Ed” who had written the email?