Crunch
Chapter 2
The days bled together. No shifts meant no cash, and no cash meant the vending machine at the end of the hall became my grocery store. Peanut butter crackers for breakfast, stale Cheetos for dinner. The heat didn’t let up, not even at night. I’d taken to sleeping on the balcony, the concrete chewing into my back, just to feel the faintest whisper of air. Not that it helped. The stillness was suffocating, like the whole city had been vacuum-sealed.
Mae stopped coming outside. Her door stayed shut, her blinds drawn. I didn’t knock. What was I gonna say? You alive in there? Stupid question. Alive wasn’t the same as living, not anymore.
Then, on the seventh day of nothing, my phone rang.
It wasn’t my boss. The number was blocked, but the voice on the other end was all business. No hello, no small talk. Just: “Kade. You want work?”
I should’ve hung up. Blocked numbers in a dead city? Bad odds. But hunger has a way of sanding down your instincts. “Depends. What’s the job?”
“Construction. Demolition. Heavy lifting. Pays triple.”
Triple. The word hooked into me. Triple meant rent. Triple meant AC. Triple meant not waking up at 3 a.m. with your throat on fire from salt dust and dread.
“Where?”
“Eastside. Old power plant. Be there at dawn.”
The line went dead.
The roads were emptier than ever. My truck’s headlights cut through the dark, illuminating boarded-up storefronts and abandoned cars with flat tires. No cops around to ticket them. No tow trucks either. The city wasn’t decaying... it was dissolving.
The power plant loomed on the edge of town, a hulking shadow against the purple pre-dawn sky. I’d driven past it a hundred times, back when the refineries still belched smoke and the streetlights flickered all the way to Juárez. Now it was a graveyard of rusted turbines and chain-link fences. Or it should’ve been.
Instead, the place was crawling.
Dozens of trucks idled near the gates, their headlights painting the dirt in stark white beams. Workers in dusty boots and hard hats milled around, their faces hidden by bandanas and sweat. No one talked. No one even looked at each other. Just the grind of engines and the clank of tools being unloaded.
A guy in a neon vest waved me toward a parking lot that hadn’t existed a week ago - fresh gravel crunching under my tires. The air smelled wrong. Not just diesel and sweat, but something sharp, metallic. Like licking a battery.
“Kade?” A woman materialized beside my truck, clipboard in hand. She wore sunglasses despite the gloom, her hair scraped into a bun so tight it looked painful. “You’re on Site B. Follow the markers.”
“Markers?”
She pointed. Glowing orange stakes dotted the ground, leading toward the skeletal remains of the plant’s main building. Except the stakes weren’t reflecting light - they were making it. A faint, sickly pulse, like fireflies trapped under glass.
“What’re we building?” I asked.
She stared at me. Or at least, her sunglasses did. “Follow the markers.”
They put me on a crew tearing down what was left of a substation. My job was simple: smash concrete, haul debris, don’t ask questions. The other workers moved like ghosts, their eyes fixed on the ground. Every now and then, someone would glance at the sky - not the dawn-streaked part, but the west, where the night still clung. Like they were waiting for something.
By noon, the heat was a living thing, pressing down until my shirt stuck to my spine. I grabbed a water jug from the supply tent, but paused when I saw the label: PROPERTY OF U.S. ARMY. The logo was half-scratched off, like someone had tried to hide it.
“Don’t drink that.”
I turned. A kid, maybe 19, stood behind me, his face smeared with soot. He nodded at the jug. “They’re mixing something in it. Keeps you awake. Makes you… twitchy.”
“You got a better option?”
He hesitated, then pulled a flask from his pocket. “Rainwater. Boiled it myself.”
I took a swig. It tasted like rust and plastic, but I didn’t care. “What’s with the army crap?”
The kid glanced over his shoulder. “You seen the vans?”
“What vans?”
“Black ones. No plates. They roll in after dark, load up the big crates from the basement.” He leaned closer, his voice dropping. “Last week, my buddy Carlos took a peek inside one. Next day? Gone. Not quit gone. Gone gone. Like… poof.”
A shout cut through the air. The kid flinched, ducking back into the crowd as the clipboard woman strode toward us.
“Break’s over,” she barked, her sunglasses glinting. “Back to work.”
They didn’t let us leave until full dark. I drove home with the windows down, the kid’s words rattling in my skull. Poof.
The city blurred past, darker than ever. Half the streetlights were dead, and the ones still working buzzed like angry wasps, flickering in time with my headache. At a stop sign, I caught movement in the rearview - a shadow flitting between buildings. Too tall to be a dog. Too fast to be human.
I hit the gas.
Back at the apartment, Mae’s door was open. Just a crack. A sour smell seeped out - spoiled milk and something sweet, like burnt sugar.
“Mae?” I called. No answer.
Her TV was on, static hissing. A single lamp cast long shadows over upturned furniture. A coffee mug lay shattered on the floor, brown stains drying on the wall.
Gone gone.
I stepped back, my pulse thudding in my ears. Across the hall, Mrs. Garza’s apartment was dark too. And Mr. Chen’s. And the college kid in 4B.
The whole building felt like a carcass.
I locked my door, shoved a chair under the handle, and tried not to think about the glowing stakes, the army water, the thing in the rearview. Tried not to think about how the paycheck in my pocket - thick with triple-rate cash - smelled faintly of chemicals.
Outside, the wind picked up, howling through the empty streets. Somewhere in the distance, a dog barked. Once. Then silence.
Sleep didn’t come.
Somewhere around 3 a.m., a sound cut through the dark... a low, resonant hum, like a power line about to snap. It came from the east.
From the power plant.
