Dead Current

Bill Donahue regretted answering his phone.

Normally, the drive from Anchorage to the small town of Whittier would take an hour or so, being only about sixty miles away. The weather was taking a turn for the worse, however; the long, curving Alaskan roadway took the better part of the whole day, what with the strong arctic winds and snow threatening the grip of his vehicle's tires. Visibility had been awful and had only gotten worse in the last hour. Bill shook his head, his eyes focused on the last mile before he would arrive at the Anton Anderson Memorial Tunnel, trying not to drop the ball in the home stretch.

I could have just said no, Bill thought to himself. He shook his head again. He knew he couldn't have—the town needed him. It had been earlier in the day when Bill received a call from the Chief of Police of Whittier.

“Mr. Donahue, it’s Sam Larkin.”

It had been Mr. Donahue. Not Bill. Not like in the past, when he was younger. Before the tragedy. Back in those days, Sam had only been an officer. Times had changed. Twenty years will do that.

Sam continued. “I hate to be calling you like this, but I got a favor to ask.”

“Sure, Sam. Shoot.”

“Well, you know, I honestly wouldn't have called, but we're in a tight spot. Getting reports that the power grid has failed in Whittier. A whiteout is rolling through the area. We can't get a hold of anyone there.”

The problem with living in a coastal town of less than three hundred people is the yearly blizzards. Normally, this wouldn't be an issue.

“You're not in town?” Bill asked.

“As a matter of fact, no. I had a meeting this morning in Anchorage, so I’m stuck on the Bear Valley side. ADoT called me on behalf of the Tunnel Control Operators… they say the power in the tunnel has failed, too. Camera system's down, the whole works. We need an electrician who knows the systems, and you're a master. I figured you were our best option since you grew up here, know the tunnel, and know the systems like the back of your hand.”

Bill knew he was buttering him up, trying to convince him to say yes, not speaking to all the suspicion and all the doubt cast when he was Sam's number one suspect when he was a teenager. “No one else available?” Bill asked.

“Sure, if you want Carl Spade handling the job.” Sam chuckled, but the joke died as soon as it left his lips.

Bill could feel the nervous energy radiating out of Sam through the phone. “What aren't you telling me?”

“Well, I… I don't really know how to explain. You just have to see it.” Sam took in a breath. “Please, Bill. Past aside, I think I really need you on this. We need you.”

Bill knew he wasn't doing it for Sam; he was doing it for the town he grew up in, the town he left behind and never looked back. He was doing it to atone.

“I'll be there as soon as I can.”

Which turned out to be after nightfall.

The clock on the dashboard of Bill's car read 9:38 p.m. He would be there in a couple minutes, just before closing time. At 10:30 p.m. every night, the tunnel operators would shut the tunnel doors on both sides—massive, vertically closing steel slabs twenty-two feet high and sixteen feet wide, designed to withstand avalanches, rockfalls, and rated for 100-mile-per-hour winds. Normally, gas generators would kick in as backup in case of any failures, but then again, the same could be said for the town of Whittier. Communication had been cut off numerous times in the past, including the camera systems failing in the tunnels. Something had Sam spooked, though. Enough that he had called Bill.

Suddenly, the Anton Anderson tunnel loomed before Bill, coming up out of nowhere. Bill slammed on the brakes and went into a spin. As he spun around, he had just enough time to see a police vehicle—a Ford Expedition—with “Whittier” on the side as he collided with it and came to a stop.

Bill's driver's door was quickly opened from the outside, the frigid cold sweeping in like a phantom, and a dim flashlight shone in his face. “Jesus, Bill! Are you okay?” It was Sam Larkin.

Bill grabbed a hold of the back of his neck and stretched; a small twinge of pain from some whiplash, but nothing serious. “Ugh, it’s Bill now, eh?”

“What's that?”

“I’m fine, I'm fine,” Bill grumbled. “Why didn't you have your lights on, for Christ’s sake?”

“About that…”

As Bill rubbed his neck again, he noticed that Sam's police vehicle did have its emergency lightbar on, flashing red and blue. The light didn't seem to pierce the darkness as much as he would have thought, but then again, visibility had been devastating in the last couple of miles.

“Sorry, Sam,” Bill apologized. “The snow… the roads… I should have seen your vehicle.”

“No harm, no foul,” Sam said. It was how he said it that made Bill feel like it had been unavoidable. It only deepened his confusion.

“Lights are part of the issue…” Sam left the sentence hanging like bait on a line.

Bill bit. “What did you want to show me?”

“Follow me.”

Bill grabbed his electrical tool backpack from the passenger seat of his car and stepped out into the freezing cold. The pair made their way over to the Bear Valley Portal Building, bracing themselves against the worsening blizzard conditions. It took a minute to cross the parking lot, but with how cold it was getting, and the wind howling like a banshee, it felt like a lifetime. Arriving at the building entrance, Sam put his shoulder against the heavy metal security door and forced the lever handle down. Using all his weight, he pushed forward as a suctioning sound was heard, caused by the building’s massive ventilation systems, and the door popped open.

Inside, it felt like a concrete tomb, the howling wind now a distant drone. They had entered the “cold zone,” the mechanical staging room built to separate the outside from the control room. The two of them crossed the room and opened a secondary door, sealing it behind them.

The control room was thankfully warm; Bill's face was already numb, his fingers tingling from lack of blood flow. Bill noticed that in addition to the heat, the lights were working just fine here. He saw dozens of monitors lined up in front of an impressive desk, all seemingly off. He knew they would normally be monitoring the tunnel itself, keeping an eye on the vehicular traffic going through, as well as the regular train deliveries to and from Whittier. He'd only been in here once as a kid, on the Whittier side; he remembered how impressed he'd been that people had gotten wiring all throughout the tunnel. It was when he first took interest in being an electrician.

The tunnel control operator seated at the desk spun around in his chair. He looked like he hadn't slept all day. “You Bill?” he said.

“Yeah, I’m Bill. You guys still have electricity or are you running off generators?”

“Gennies. Fuel's ‘bout half empty. Or full, if you happen to be one of those types.”

Bill frowned. “If you're running off generators, why aren't the cameras feeding anything to your monitors?”

“Million dollar question. Monitors ain't off. They're still streaming.”

“When did they…” Bill trailed off. “Malfunction?”

The tunnel control operator and Sam Larkin exchanged a look. Sam nodded minutely. The operator answered, “Not a hundred percent sure. It was before my partner and I opened the tunnel door for morning traffic. We didn't have any trains scheduled that night, so the shift was kind of slow.”

“You guys still open at 7 a.m.?” Bill asked.

“Like clockwork. My partner saw that the monitors were out, so we ran a diagnostic. It said the central junction box was on the fritz—mile one point seven-five. We opened the tunnel door on our side and he went to see if he could figure out how to repair the outage down the line.”

“Did he find anything?”

The operator looked down. “He never came back. No cars either.”

“No cars have been through all day?” Bill’s eyes darted over to Sam. “Sam, no more games.”

Sam didn’t answer immediately. Instead, he grabbed a duffel bag from the corner of the room and slung it over his shoulder, as if it had been staged there, awaiting their arrival. Sam gestured to another door. “This way.”

The door led to the tunnel itself. The tunnel was completely pitch black, except for the large door opening back out to the parking lot. The wind roared through the opening with a deafening noise. Sam dropped the duffel bag on the ground, knelt down, and unzipped it. He withdrew an orange flare gun and stood. “Ready?” he yelled.

Sam shot the flare gun down the tunnel, deep into the dark. The flare whizzed about two hundred feet before settling on the ground.

“Sam,” Bill started, “I don't… under… stand…” Bill trailed off as his mind tried to play catch-up with what his eyes were telling him. He could see the flare two hundred feet away, glowing a bright phosphorous red, but it wasn't illuminating anything. He tried to replay the moment Sam shot the flare back in his mind and suddenly realized he hadn't seen the flare illuminate anything—not the tunnel walls, the ground, nothing.

Sam clamped a hand on Bill's shoulder, causing him to jump. Sam raised his voice. “It's like that for some reason. The light. I thought it was a trick of my eyes outside, but I knew my cruiser's flashers weren't as bright as they should be. The tunnel is where it's the worst, like it's trying to suffocate the light.”

“You don't need an electrician, Sam. You need a priest.”

“It's probably just a pressure system from the whiteout, playing tricks with the lights. Nothing malevolent.”

Bill wasn't convinced. The flare from the gun down the tunnel winked out of existence.

“Come on, Bill. I seem to recall you shadowing a few of the older electricians back when you were an apprentice. You know the tunnel, just like you know the Buckner Building.”

Bill felt his stomach tighten, a chill running down his spine. Sam mentioning the Buckner Building was a haunting reminder of a past he'd tried very hard to forget.

Sam noticed. “Sorry, Bill. I didn’t mean it like that. You were cleared. Total accident, right? It was dumb of me to mention.”

Bill squeezed his eyes shut a moment and took a deep breath. “How many flares you got?”

“For the gun, four more rounds, but the duffel has about twenty fusees. Each fusee should burn for about fifteen minutes. If you want, you could always L-shape them, have one catch the other as it burns down. There's also a radio, direct line to me.”

Bill checked his watch. It was 10:26 p.m. The portal door would be closing in four minutes, sealing Bill inside without any sense of direction other than the flares he would leave behind. The only good news was the tunnel was perfectly straight from end to end, and the roaring wind would stop. Bill unslung his backpack and set it on the ground. He withdrew a headlamp and secured it to the top of his head. He turned it to its brightest setting; the light was bright, but it didn't help at all. Bill held his hand up to the light and slowly moved it further and further away.

“Two feet,” Bill muttered. “The light only goes two feet.”

Bill turned to the duffel bag and transferred the fusees to his backpack, leaving two on the side; he pocketed the flare gun; lastly, he secured the radio to his backpack strap. He held the transmit button down. “Testing, one, two, three.”

Sam's radio crackled to life—it worked.

Bill struck one of the fusees and set it on the ground; with the second, he set it at the end of the lit one to form an L.

“Should take you fifteen to twenty minutes to hit mile 1.75,” Sam said. “I'll relight this spot in thirty minutes. All you gotta do is work your way back.”

Bill nodded. “Be back soon.”

Sam retreated back through the door into the tunnel control center.

Bill shouldered his backpack and set off, deeper into the darkness. He figured his best bet in making good time would be to use the concrete walkway built into one side of the tunnel. He could effectively use one foot off the curb, serving as a cane to guide him by hobbling along. It was certainly uncomfortable, but his method worked.

A minute later, Bill nearly had a heart attack: the massive steel door to the tunnel entrance began to lower, a thundering sound that rattled his core. When the door slammed shut, the tunnel went all but silent. Bill was in complete darkness. When he looked behind him, he could see the flare, a tiny red light a few hundred yards away. He let out a breath and continued.

The minutes dragged on. It took longer than expected, but Bill found the first of the emergency safehouse turnouts, used for people whose cars broke down. It meant he’d gone nearly a third of a mile. He decided to set another L-shape of fusees, lighting one. Bill turned and could still see the red light of the flare where he had set off from, nothing more than a dot.

As Bill continued his shuffle forward, his mind wandered to his earlier days in Whittier. During the harsh winters, the entire town lived in one place—the fourteen-story building known as Begich Towers. He recalled power going out several times, the very real fear of freezing to death ever present. Some people couldn't handle the pressure. Suicide wasn't common, but it did happen. With only candlelit lamps for light, the building took on a haunting presence for the residents praying that electricity be restored. Electricians had been heroes to the small town, and to Bill. He wanted to follow in their footsteps, to save people in his own way.

Bill found the next two emergency turnouts and repeated his fusee arrangement. He'd be at mile 1.75 in short order. He keyed his radio. “Sam, I'm nearly there.”

Static responded.

“Sam? Do you copy?”

The static grew in intensity, crackling like electricity arcing between wires. Bill felt off-balance, unable to catch his breath. The sound awakened a deeply repressed memory, the one he'd buried and thought he would take to the grave. He was a teenager back in Whittier, cozying up to Colleen, the girl he'd had his eye on since pickings were slim in a small town. Bill wanted to impress her, take her on a date, away from prying eyes and gossiping lips. The pair broke into the Buckner Building, defunct and abandoned since the Soviet era, only a quarter-mile away from Begich. They made their way down to the basement's recreational complex where the movie theater was, originally for World War II soldiers to blow off steam. The first few rows were underwater from glacier melt, the ceiling covered in ghostly, white stalactites. Bill could still smell the wet, rotting upholstery, the smell of burning flesh—

The radio’s static hissed out. A voice from beyond the grave rippled through the air, seemingly all around him. “Billiam.” It was the nickname Colleen had given him, before he had accidentally killed her trying to jump-start the theater's circuit box.

Bill spun around, expecting to see her. One by one, the distant fusees winked out of existence, furthest to closest. Bill frantically set his backpack on the ground and struck a flare. The light flickered for a moment, then died.

“Billiam… My sweet, Billiam. Why did you blame me for the accident?”

Bill struck another flare. It had been an accident—on Bill's part. If he didn't blame Colleen, it would have fallen under negligent homicide; his career as an electrician would be over before it began. The flare flickered and died.

One by one, Bill ran through his few remaining flares, each flashing once before dying. The light on his helmet turned out. Bill spun around, trying to orient himself. If he could make it to the circuit box at mile 1.75, he'd be safe. He saw what looked like sparks in the near distance. He ran for it, tripping and falling as he went.

Colleen's voice followed him, calling for him to join her in the beyond.

Closer and closer, the circuit box and her voice, equidistant, fighting to see who would get there first. Bill could smell her burnt hair, her scorched flesh, her hot breath on his neck. He was nearly there. Bill tripped, windmilling towards the box, sparks flying off it in all directions. He stopped just in time, his death all but assured if he had made contact.

Bill cursed himself. Frantic, he had left his backpack behind. No tools. No insulated gloves. Wiping the sweat from his brow despite the cold, he knew he could do this. Bill went to work with surgical precision, his fingers working off memory, a master at work.

The mountain groaned, the power restored, with blinding, searing white light.

“I knew you could do it, Bill,” a voice whispered.

Beside him stood Colleen, not a day older than when she died. She hugged Bill, a violent spasm overriding the rhythm in his chest.

When Sam found him an hour later, it was determined Bill had suffered an episode of ventricular fibrillation, despite showing no signs of electrical shock.

Bill died a hero.