Scrambled Eggs

Nighthawk was at the diner. He was perched on a stool before a cooling mug of coffee, head cocked, concentrated on the small receiver in his ear.  The tiny headset relayed the signal of a police radio scanner sewed into the liner of his duster. 

He sighed. It was quiet night. Nighthawk didn’t care much for quiet nights.

For my part, I sat on the next stool over. I pushed the remains of a slice of strawberry-rhubarb around on a plate with a fork and concentrated on being as unobtrusive as possible.  I kept my mouth largely shut, as was becoming a squire and wannabe apprentice and side-kick. 

I sighed. It was quiet night. I didn’t care much for whatever Nighthawk didn’t care much for.

And vice-versa. If that makes sense. 

It was near midnight, and the Broad Street diner was our usual haunt on these quiet nights. It was open 24-7, the coffee was good, the pie was adequate, and, frankly, it was obvious that Nighthawk had a thing for Clarice, the waitress. Not that he would never admit to that though.  He’d never admit to any weakness of human emotion. But to be honest, there was something alluring about her. That sneering smile, the fairy tattoo, those strawberry curls topped with a paper diadem. Something regal almost.

Anyway, in theory, quiet was good. It meant that, at least in this particular East Trenton neighborhood, we (well, mostly Nighthawk) had already delivered the lion’s share of hoodlums, scoundrels, and perverts into the hands of the cops, and bloodied a significant portion of the remainder. And, the rest of the potential evil-doers were becoming too scared to even venture out into the street nights, lest they run afoul of Nighthawk’s fists and pistol. And to a lesser extent my own taser, when providing the occasional assist.

Reference to the pistol is somewhat misleading, I admit here for clarity, as the Nighthawk tended to crack the butt of the Ruger across the heads and faces of the baddies rather than blow them away. And for that, he considered the pistol whipping something of a charity, considering he could easily shoot them in the face instead. He usually told them as much, as they wailed in the gutter clutching a bloody rag to their nose and awaiting a patrol car to pick them up.

At length, Nighthawk looked up from his radio. “Ce, give me a heater,” he barked softly, and the waitress behind the counter sprang up from her own stool by the cash register and added a dollop of coffee to his mug. The squelch of her sneakers on the rubber floor mat and heavy cloud of rosy perfume was indeed somehow intoxicating. Nighthawk attempted to make eye contact and offer an awkward smile as she poured, but Clarice would have none of it. 

He’d been chatting her up occasionally over the past few months, whenever he got the nerve. And he had something of an innocent charm; when he chose to talk he gushed like a schoolboy with tales of imaginary pirates and bank robbers clobbered on the way home from school. He’d filled her in a bit on our exploits, on the QT despite my misgivings on telling anyone what we were up to prowling the city at nights. But he didn’t have much else to say and also didn’t have much of a filter. I don’t think he was hoping to get her into bed per se. I don’t think he considered it that far ahead. He was happy mostly just for the chitchat.  A lilting laugh to his occasion self-deprecating joke, a little squeeze on the shoulder as she squeaked by with the coffee pot. Nighthawk wasn’t asking for or anticipating much I don’t think. Under his swash and buckles, he wasn’t a pretty man. Pretty men do not wear a mask and prowl the city rescuing kids from burning buildings and pummeling would be rapists into the sidewalk.

Clarice, as usual, would rather not be let in to what she assumed to be his (our) superhero delusion, and, refused to meet his gaze. Disappointed, Nighthawk instead, he tossed a couple of bills on the counter.

“Please, Mista Nighthawk,” she snorted, “Don’t be throwing all ya dollars at me. I don’t need your money.”

He raised an eyebrow.

“I’m independently wealthy, you know. I do this—” Her arms swept the room full of half dozing taxi cab drivers and drunk hipsters, “—just to keep myself grounded.”

“Sure,” he nodded not having much of witty retort and afraid any he might make would offend her sensibilities. Squee squee squee, she slipped back over to her stool and today’s crossword puzzle.

Before going back to the earpiece, Nighthawk looked my way. “Quiet,” he scowled. It was unclear if it was a description or a command, “Where is he, kid?”

I didn’t answer. Most of what Nighthawk said was more-or-less rhetorical, or at least I was not of sufficient station to answer. And besides I had no idea where he was. He being The Archbishop, Nighthawk’s sworn enemy, arch-nemesis, foil and all around villain, whom we hadn’t clapped eyes or ears on since foiling an attempt to blow up the state museum two months prior.

Nighthawk, turned to stare back at the wall, hand going back to clasp the secreted earphone tighter to his head as if hoping to hear something more, something buried underneath what was tonight, mostly inane chirping of Police officers back and forth trading stories about wives and war stories. He shifted restlessly, size 13 engineer’s clinking on the foot rail, and sighed again. “Listen, kid, what we got to do is—”

Nighthawk was interrupted by a blinding flash lighting up the dark city as far as one could see, or at least could see if not blinded. Nighthawk, however, had had his eyes closed concentrating on his radio while imagining Clarice’s legs wrapped around his waist. He sprang up grabbing his fedora off the counter and spilling the coffee into a forgotten plate of eggs and toast and corned beef hash just in time for the subsequent sonic boom.

Hands went to ears across the diner. Fluorescent bulbs shattered overhead and rained down glass. Appliances along the counter popped in a series of small explosions save for the blender which slowly whirred to a stop mid-milkshake. Outside car were heard crashing and sirens sprang up and immediately disappears. My taser sizzled on my waist a second and then dropped off my belt and smashed onto the tile floor. Worst of all, my i-phone seized up and went dead in my hand, leaving candies forever to be uncrushed.

I could make out Nighthawk in the flickering light of a toaster fire, a puff of smoke wafted up from his ear piece. He swiped it away from his head in disgust. Given the conclusion that we were just piecing together in our minds, it was likely he had an untold collection of dead gadgets holstered and sewed into his clothes. It was Nighthawk who put the suspicion into words:

“Jesus Monkey Christ.” He spat, “EMP attack.”

For what it was worth, I nodded back in the dark. I don’t know what other kind of blast could take out all the electronics like that. He surveyed the room, found Clarice cowering under the counter and offered a hand. 

“Huh?” she mumbled, rising on unsteady legs.
“EMP. A nuclear denotation causing a burst of 
electromagnetic radiation in the atmosphere,” Nighthawk inspected the room as he spoke, assuring himself of his conclusions, “The electron bombardment overrides the breakdown voltages of all of our electronics.”

“Meaning?”

“Meaning everything is pretty much fried.”

“Is it this Archbishop you keep talking about?” Clarice asked as she clambered up, “This supervillain you say is threatening the city?” This was a crazy situation and she was now on-board with Nighthawk’s brand of craziness.

In the dark, Nighthawk blushed. Or at least I imagined he did. Clarice shouldn’t know about The Archbishop and any of his threats, and Nighthawk knew that he ought not to have told her about it. 

“Doubtful. This is well-above the Archbishop’s paygrade.” 

“Who do you think, then?” 

“It’s the G-D Chinese or the NORKs more like…” He stroked his chin thoughtfully. It was not like him to let thoughtfulness distract from his chivalry, “Listen. You okay, Ce?” 

She nodded. He brushed some lightbulb shards from the large fake blossom pinned above her name badge, smiled again and hoped the smile wasn’t taken as creepy.

“Anybody hurt?” he shouted over the moans and groans of the other patrons.

There was some shaking of heads to the effect of “No.” and “Not really,” amongst the patrons climbing out from under tables and chairs. Nighthawk strode to the back hall and took up a fire extinguisher hanging near the men’s room. He foamed out the toaster fire but a few pockets of flamed still dotted the diner.

“Here!” He shoved the extinguisher at the greasy chef emerging from the kitchen, and headed to the door, sliding on his leather gloves. He paused at the threshold to slip his balaclava on under his hat for good measure. However, everything was both dark and silent in the city outside. 

“How far to think everything’s fried?” Clarice called from the counter as I took up my position at Nighthawk’s rear, “Maybe it was a small one.”

“I don’t think there is such a thing as a small EMP, Ce.”

“So what? The whole city? The whole tristate? The whole eastern seaboard?”

“Sure. Maybe. Depends.”

“On?”

“How high it was mostly. A few hundred miles up could take out the whole country.”

“Shit. Shit. Shit. How do we even know? How do we find out?”

“Indeed. Up till now we were mostly speculating on what this kind of thing might do. It wasn’t supposed to be able to overload the short electrical conductors in small electronics, for example,” he said, tearing his dead radio scanner out of its hiding lining under his armpit, dropping it on the ground and crushing it with his boot for effect.

We could her sobbing a little bit in the dark at the prospect of a deadened world. 

“But then again, Ce, no one expected that the Trenton Nighthawk was going to be on the case when the attack happened,” he smiled at her again, attempting to be reassuring. But there wasn’t much chance she could see him as the cook tamped out the various fires about the diner. “Information, Ce. That’s the first thing. We need information.” 

“Okay. How?”

“Don’t worry, Ce. The Trenton Nighthawk is on the case.”

He turned with a dramatic swoosh of his cloak—the long fabric pinned under his collar was that, he insisted, was definitely not a cape—but hesitated a second in the doorway. 
Nighthawk was never long without a plan and a course of action, though. After all, even his most impromptu and ill-thought scheme usually panned out if not for sheer persistence alone. 

“Let’s go, kid.” He beckoned, and tromped purposefully out into the silenced street towards his 73 Chevy Impala parked half a block down. The radio was likely fried but everything else in the old whale was probably still working. Reaching the car he was irritated to find me not climbing into the passenger side alongside him. I was carefully picking my way through the wreckage strewn sidewalk in the gloom. 

“Come on. Come on. Come on.” He insisted waving me on. Coming from another it would come off as a whine.  I kept slowly making my way. I didn’t want to check out of the low-tech apocalypse early by slicing an artery open on a jagged piece of street debris. This was not to belie my own haste. I very much wanted us to get back to our lair as soon as humanly possible. There was not a safer place to be right now than in our bunker dug into the bluff behind the Route 29 tunnel, a salvaged sub-basement from a bottling plant log since torn down during the redevelopment of the waterfront.

“We’ve got to get to the Capitol.” He insisted as I finally reached my co-pilots place on the bench seat. I groaned. What did he expect to accomplish at the statehouse at midnight after an EMP attack? He offered no answer. But to my pleasant surprise we did not head down State Street but to our cozy basement now filled with the smoke of fried microchips—but only to load up the Chevy’s trunk with whatever non-tech gadgets we had in our arsenal, changes of scarves and gloves, bedrolls and bungee cords—before heading back out into the city. 

Back on the surface streets, he picked his way through the stalled and abandoned cars looking for an unobstructed way unto the interstate. Not downtown.

“At this rate we’ll never make it to DC by morning.” He sighed and looked over, noticing the confusion on my face. “Where did you think we were going? To the state capitol? The governor’s mansion or something? This is big potatoes, son. If we want to find out what the hell is going on and what we can do to help, we got to go to where the action is. Washington.”

Now it was my turn to sigh again. Snow was now starting to drift down, and we’d finally managed to get turned around and pointed towards the southbound tunnel lanes. Nighthawk slowed to a stop, intent, I assume, on scoping the dark tunnel before entering. But we just sat there in the dark.

He drummed the steering wheel thoughtfully. “I know what you’re thinking.” He accused, after a minute’s consideration, “When the chips were down, the great Nighthawk, the Mercer County Merc, abandoned his city. Set off on some seemingly random plan of becoming some post-apocalyptic brigadier general, advisor to the president or rich land vassal. Leaving his loved ones behind. Well, fuck that monkey shit nonsense."

He clapped me on the shoulder. “I still got you right? Who else? We’re a tight knit crime fighting duo. A team. Fuck it. Everyone else in this G-D down can rot. They’re going to start tearing each other apart come morning. Wanna take on a whole city of crazies unleashed.” 

I shook my head. Nope. Not me.

He smiled and drummed the steering wheel some more. I could see a thought forming behind his eyes. He threw the car into reverse, and backed up to Cass Street and headed back towards Broad. 

We found Clarice easily enough, barricaded alone in the diner, swinging a 2x4 at a few rapist thief murderers coming at her behind the counter. “Low-tech,” Nighthawk smirked, sliding a baseball bat from behind the driver’s seat. ‘You can wait.”

A minute later, he was trotting back out of the diner, with a shell-shocked Clarice slung over one shoulder and the bloody bat over the other. He laid her on the bench next to me and tossed the Louisville slugger into the trunk amongst our few provisions as he came around. 

“Okay,” he smiled whipping around Whitehorse Circle on the ice, “Forget the Interstate. Guess we’re taking 206 out to the Turnpike and then down to the Delaware Memorial Bridge.  And, then we’ll see what we see. DC or bust.”

“DC?” Clarice mumbled coming back to her senses.

“We’re going to help the President.” Nighthawk boomed in his best hero voice.

“I can’t meet the President like this,” she produced a lipstick and yanked the rearview mirror to primp. 

“Sorry,” Nighthawk pulls it back trying not to snap, “I need this to drive.”

“Oh, well, I guess there’s time.” She unpinned her name plate and tosses it unto the dash, slipped off her Chuck Taylors and stretched her feet unto the dash as well. “Put on the radio on then, NH.”

“Sorry, that’s fried. Everything’s fried. We’re lucky to be moving at all.”

“Aww. Forgot.” She pouts. ““Tolls won’t be a problem at least.” 

“Indeed.”

“Conversation?”

“Indeed.” Nighthawk smiled again, “Not to worry, I shall regale you with tales of my escapades and adventures.”

“Do tell,” She stuck her tongue at him and squeezed his arm a bit, on board for the craziness.

A third wheel, I climbed over into the back and stretched out too. Through the opera windows, the stars over Trenton were visible for the first time in a century. It was perhaps, not to be so bad.