The Survivors by Alex Schulman

Author:Alex Schulman [Schulman, Alex]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
Published: 2021-10-05T00:00:00+00:00

2

Beyond the Gravel Road

| 14 |

10:00 A.M.

He looks up at the massive electrical poles along the European highway. Their black cables swoop slowly into the summer outside the car windows, then curve up again, reaching their highest point at the tops of the enormous steel structures that line the road, one hundred yards, then they dip again, curtsying at the meadows below.

One time Benjamin’s circuit-breaker box caught fire. He managed to put the flames out, but an electrician had to come fix the short circuit. The man stood in the hall and unscrewed the panel to get access. He was skilled, had the first housing off in just a few seconds, gathered the screws in his beefy fist. He was about to move on, starting on the next housing, when all of a sudden a cross breeze caught the kitchen door and slammed it right behind him, and the electrician’s immediate reaction: he dropped everything he was holding and raised his hands as if this were a stick-up. Benjamin was confused. As the electrician gathered up the screws and tools that were scattered across the hall floor, Benjamin asked what had happened. “Occupational hazard,” he said. “The instant an electrician hears a bang, he drops everything.”

The fear of getting a shock. He never knew it as a child. Before the accident, he was drawn to electricity. Behind the pool complex was a horse farm, and after his swimming lesson one day, as the other children were walking back to school, Benjamin wandered over to the electrical fence that penned the horses into their pasture. He stood there for a long time, looking down at the thin wire and the laminated yellow warning sign that showed a hand touching the line and red lightning bolts flying in all directions. He held both hands close to the wire, as if to dare himself; he cupped his hands without touching it, and then he grabbed on. A quick pulse of current flowed through his hand and reached his armpits before it died out. He recalls feeling strangely exhilarated afterward. It was as if the current had done something about his peculiar lack of energy for a moment; he got a jolt, and as it flowed through him it was as if he heard a voice whispering: “Get moving!”

Pierre is speeding down the highway, always in the left-hand lane. Whenever he has to slow down for someone up ahead—highway tourists passing each other at their own pace—he cruises up right behind them and flashes his brights, immediately scaring them out of the far lane, and Pierre speeds up again and the engine revs as it accelerates, sounding hale and hearty.

“Food!” Pierre suddenly shouts, pointing at a road sign that’s approaching from the horizon.

“Finally,” Nils mumbles from the back.

The fast-food restaurant looks like any other. The employees wear gold stars on their chests; some have several, others none at all, so everyone can tell who is good and who is bad. Each one

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