think they’re trapped!” He grabbed the arm of the man walking beside him. “I bet the lifts are jammed or something. Look, they need help!”
The man stared back at him. “What can we do about it? I’m not a lift engineer, are you?”
“No, but there might be something we can do. Come on, those people need us.” Clint smiled like Superman, the sunlight glinting helpfully on his rather uneven teeth.
Reluctantly persuaded, the other man joined him in a jog along the overpass to the nearest off-ramp and back along the streets to the office building, where they used a length of wood to prise apart the sliding glass doors to gain access to the lobby. Clint put his briefcase inside the door and looked around.
A young woman was wringing her hands at the reception desk.
“Oh my God, please say you’ve come to help. There are four lifts stuck with people in them and I can’t call anyone to come and get them working again. All our phones are on a switchboard and none of the back-up generators are working, not one.” Her voice rose in a wail. “I don’t know what I’m supposed to do!”
Clint grabbed her firmly by the upper arms and looked into her eyes.
“It’s all right, we’re here now, calm down. Take a deep breath. Better?”
She nodded.
“My name’s Clint and this is Pete. Show me where the lifts are and let’s see what we can do.”
She responded to his obvious authority with relief.
Faced with a row of four closed elevator doors Clint drew on all the Hollywood material in his memory. He knew what to expect. He’d force open the first set of doors and be faced with a yawning chasm of emptiness as a brightly-lit steel shaft extended to infinity in either direction. He was pretty sure he could climb a lift shaft if he had to, but he really hoped it wouldn’t be necessary.
With the help of his new friend Pete and the length of wood, he prised open the first set of doors and looked up into near-darkness. The grubby bottom of the lift was just one floor above them and they could clearly hear banging on the walls.
“We’ll be there in a bit,” he yelled. “Hold on!”
“Hold on?” Pete snorted. “They’re in a metal box. What do they need to hold on for?”
“It’s just what you say when you’re rescuing someone,” muttered Clint. He’d said it without thinking, following the script in his head.
They clattered up the stairs to the next floor and found several people standing in front of the elevator doors trying to pull them apart.
“Stand back, we’ve brought a lever for that,” ordered Clint. Gratefully, they moved aside to allow the apparent experts to do their stuff.
Clint and Pete applied their baulk of timber and forced the doors open. Once the grateful occupants were released three of them disappeared in a hurry to the nearest toilets but the others stayed to shake hands and express their thanks. Only one man seemed curious.
“You don’t look like the usual lift guys. Where’s the Schindler maintenance team?”
Clint and Pete exchanged glances. These people had no idea of the current circumstances of their world.
“It’s complicated,” said Clint. “Come and look out of the window.”
He showed them the stationary cars all along the motorway and explained that nothing electrical seemed to be working.
“So that’s why none of us could get a phone signal,” said the man, frowning. “I guess the back-up generators have been knocked out as well then?”
“Looks that way, yes. God knows what the problem is but it seems pretty comprehensive.”
A flash of movement above them caught Clint’s eye, reminding him of the people he’d seen waving from an upper floor, so he gathered up Pete and their trusty piece of wood and headed for the stairs.
He saw the end of the white banner flapping five floors up.
“I knew someone would come eventually!” exclaimed an anxious plump woman, fussing towards him. “We couldn’t get anyone on the phone so I said we should flag down someone to help. It’s the lift, you see. It stopped, and the CEO is trapped in there.”
“No problem, ma’am,” intoned Clint. “We’ll soon have that sorted out for you.”
“Oh thank goodness. She’ll be frantic about getting home to her children.”
She? Another ‘Hollywood, trapped in an elevator’ thought crossed Clint’s mind.
“Um, she’s not heavily pregnant or anything is she? Not due to give birth at any moment?”
“Oh no. Definitely not.”
With relief in his heart Clint set about forcing open the lift doors.
By the time he and Pete had freed the passengers in the other two elevators, the sky outside was darkening and the sun had set, leaving an ominous blood-red glow across the western clouds.
“I didn’t know it was that late,” he said to Pete. “My wife will be wondering why I’m not home.”
With a pang of guilt he realised he hadn’t given her a second thought since he’d become caught up in the day’s adventures. She was alone in suburbia, unable to contact him.
Another thought turned his heart to lead and he knew he should have made more effort to get home sooner.
But night had fallen now, and it was utterly dark outside with no lights of any kind. Should he try to stumble onwards and risk injury, or would it be better to shelter overnight and continue the journey in the morning? His feet gave him the answer by throbbing painfully in his black leather business shoes.
“You’re welcome to sleep in our client lounge,” said the plump woman. “I can’t offer you a hot meal of course but there are biscuits and milk and comfortable couches. It’s the least we can do after all your help.”
“Thank you, I appreciate that.”
Next morning as hazy orange light shone in the windows, Clint packed his overnight things back in his briefcase, feeling wretched. How had he allowed his zest for heroics to keep him from going home to his wife who needed him?
He made his way downstairs, shivering. A security man was sitting in front of the glass doors keeping watch. He jumped to his feet as Clint approached.
“You’re the guy who did all the rescuing yesterday, right? You were quite the hero.”
“It was no big deal,” Clint began.
“Well the CEO was impressed with you, dude. She left these, said you should take them.”
He handed Clint two plastic carry-bags.
“No, look, I’m travelling on foot. I don’t need more stuff to carry, but thanks anyway.” He tried to hand them back but the security man refused.
“Look inside, man.”
Clint opened a bag and peered in. It was full of slim cardboard boxes that appeared to be a variety of pharmaceuticals and medical supplies.
“She’s a nice lady, that CEO. She’s given you a heap of our stock samples as like, a thank-you gift.”
“Oh! Right. I guess they’re not too heavy. Tell her I’m grateful, would you?”
The leaden feeling in his heart deepened. There was a sick person in his life but he had a strong foreboding that in today’s circumstances no amount of pills would be any use.
He walked all the way back to the motorway and followed its sweeping concrete curves across the rest of the silent city towards the sea. A straggle of walkers headed in the same direction, northwards away from the city. He thought about marching, but his heart wasn’t in it. This was more like some zombie apocalypse movie, and he wasn’t really the hero.
Two hours later he crossed the Auckland harbour bridge, walking past the lined-up cars, ignoring the spectacular view of the city. He didn’t even notice the scattering of power boats drifting past beneath him on the outgoing tide.
Smoke tainted the fresh sea breeze.
As he reached the far end of the bridge he saw a line of orange and white plastic barriers across the road, with a narrow gap guarded by a young and worried policeman. He was allowing refugees out of the city but stopping any from going in the other direction. As Clint approached, t
he officer was directing a middle-aged woman away from the bridge. She seemed annoyed at being prevented from crossing over to the city.
Clint trudged on, head down. The young cop waved him through the barrier without question. Clint kept walking.
“Hi, can you tell me anything about what’s happening?”
He raised tired eyes to meet the middle-aged woman’s bright gaze and came over to where she was standing. He leaned against the barrier with a wince.
“The city’s buggered,” he stated flatly. “I’ve had to walk all the way from the south and the whole place is blacked out.”
“Really? It’s not just here on the North Shore then. It must be a hell of a power cut.”
“The main transmission lines were exploding left right and centre with flames and smoke everywhere. As far as I could see across the plains, pylons were all bent and twisted, dripping fire from the wires.” He shuddered. “Freaked me right out. One thing I can tell you, there’ll be no electricity coming into the city from the south for a hell of a long time. It’ll take them months to fix that lot.”
“But…” she stammered. “That’s impossible.”
He had no answer to that. It was impossible, and yet, it had happened.
Clint walked on, leaving her talking to the empty air.
Half an hour later he wearily stumbled up his own front path and opened the door. It was tempting to call out ‘Honey, I’m home,’ as he usually did, but this wasn’t a time for joking. He had to face a situation there was no script for.
His wife heard the door and ran out to greet him. Relief lit her bright blue eyes.
“Darling! I’m so glad you’re home –