03 Debris

Jack and Luke leave Black Hollow for the day

03

Debris

 

“Sorry I didn’t come up after shooting last night, I got home and Rusty was losing his mind”

“Yeah, Billy was losing it too”

Jack took a seat at Luke’s dining table while Luke was boiling water in a pan from the gas stove.

“What did you get up to?” asked Jack.

“Sat on the driveway for while watching the storm blow through, at one point the trees weren’t even blowing around, they were just leaning perfectly sideways in the wind”

“Yeah, I walked in to my apartment and as the door closed behind me there was a huge flash of lightning and the power went out. Luckily there was enough light to get a bunch of candles out, then Rusty and I just lay on the bed watching it blow by”

“Yeah it was gone real quick, only lasted 30 or 40 minutes, eh?”

“Pretty rough, there was a bunch of s**t on the road coming up here.”

Luke poured hot water over two cups of coffee granules and handed one to Jack. Jack looked around Luke’s apartment for candles. “Did you have any light?”

“No, Billy and I just fell asleep on the sofa here”

“Have you heard anything about when the power might come back on?”

“Not yet, could call dispatch at 8 o’clock and find out though”

Jack looked down at his watch, 8 o’clock was only 45 minutes away. He looked up at Luke who was grinding smoke into a bowl.

 

The boys smoked and talked about how they enjoyed shooting the crossbow last evening, Luke had bought it 3 years ago but had never shot the thing. They had moved to the driveway in a pair of lawn chairs now and were sharing the corncob pipe over coffee.

“Shall we get some breakfast in town?”

“F**k yeah bud”

 

 

******

 

Jack and Luke were driving the long road to town. They both lived in Black Hollow; a mountain top village 1 mile above sea level in the middle of British Columbia, Canada. The air was pure and thin, trees were plentiful even around the village. The village was not big; it took less than 2 minutes to walk all the way through, it consisted of one general store, one bar, about 50 apartments and a fire department. It took two hours to drive from Black Hollow to the nearest town. The small general store in Black Hollow took care of the most basic needs; food, cleaning products, bathroom tissue, alcohol, etc. so there wasn’t much need to ever leave the village, thus earned its nickname ‘Black Hole’. But today there was no power, and Jack didn’t take much to the idea of that.

Driving down the long windy road, the boys had seen a tree that had fallen through the power lines. There were men in florescent jackets and hard hats semi circling the problem, tipping their lids up and scratching their brains. Jack pulled his cell phone from his pocket and dialed the number for Black Hollow Dispatch.

“Good Morning Black Hollow Dispatch?”

“Morning Jane, it’s Jack”

“Hey Jack, how are you?”

“I’m good, just heading in to town, we drove by the tree down on the power lines, any idea of how long the power will be out?”

“I was told it should be back by 1600 hours earlier on this morning, how bad is the damage?”

“It looks like that tree took out a hole section of cabling, no damage to the poles though”

“Well, that was one hell of a storm that came through here last night”

“No kidding! Well thanks for the update, I’ll talk to you later”

Author's Note

subject to change, work in progress