<strong>-- Hester Valdenor - Marty's Auto Repair -- </strong><br/><hr/><div class="floatright">(http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v296/rcburner/Astrid1-1.jpg)</div><br/>"Try it now!"<br/><br/>Hester wheeled herself out from under the dusty, dented crimson Jaguar that some punk out-of-towners had pushed down off the freeway, the engine completely overheated and the axles completely knocked out of place.  The<em>shitheads</em>, as she had not hesitated to call them to their faces, had likely been joyriding damn near across the whole damn state without checking the coolant levels and treating the once-pristine vehicle like an off-road tank instead of giving it the proper loving tending care that it deserved in her eyes.  Two of them didn't even look old enough to drive, and all four dressed like they were the hottest shits to ever pop out of their rich mother's twat.<br/><br/>It had taken most of the day to deal with their ineptitude and the extensive damage, and the normally mellow young woman was wound up as tightly as a feral alley cat staring down a quadriplegic rat stuffed with catnip.<br/><br/>The car groaned like an old man having an asthma attack as Gerry, the mechanic that actually worked there full-time, turned the key in the ignition.<br/><br/>"Again," she said, glaring fiercely at the car as though it could be willed to life with a concentrated dose of irritation.<br/><br/>The engine puttered, coughed, and died again.<br/><br/>"Again!  C'mon man, really jam that fucker in there!" she cried, at this point about as desperate as she was angry.<br/><br/>"It ain't a two-dollar woman, Hessy," the young ginger said wearily, attempting to lighten the mood with a trademark grin that fit his angled trickster of a face just perfectly.  "This right here is a classy dame!  Y'gotta treat her gentle-like, ease her into it.  Otherwise she'll just bleed everywhere and it'll be a damn mess all over the sheets-"<br/><br/>"Speaking from experience?" she shot back, wiping the sweat from her tanned brow with the clean patch of her oil rag.<br/><br/>"Hey, I don't go prodding into<em>your</em>sex life.  Though I gotta say, I've been tempted once or twice," he added, waggling his caterpillar brow.<br/><br/>Hester rolled her eyes, puffing out her cheeks before heaving a sigh and forcing a tired smirk.  "For the sake of your sanity<em>and</em>mine, I implore you to reconsider."<br/><br/>"Hey, I'm not paying you guys to put on a fucking comedy act here!" the eldest of the four punks blurted, taking time out of his not-so-busy schedule of pacing around and plugging the air outside the garage up with cigarette smoke.  "Get back to work!"<br/><br/>Looking at Hess, Gerry could almost<em>hear</em>the final straw snapping just behind the dark look worming its way onto her face, a sound like a fire cracker going off.  He glanced between her and the rich kid, perhaps gauging whether he'd be able to get out of the car in time to prevent a class action lawsuit, when she suddenly turned on her heel, lifted one combat-booted leg nearly 90 damn degrees in the air, then brought it down furiously onto the hood of the Jaguar.<br/><br/>The cigarette fell from the kid's mouth as a look of complete dumb shock came over him.  Gerry covered his eyes and groaned in a way that suggested this wasn't the first time something of the like had happened.  Hester slowly turned towards the latter, jabbed a finger at him like a knife, and hissed in the lowest, deadliest voice she could manage:<br/><br/>"Turn.  The.<strong>Fucking.</strong>Key."<br/><br/>The man's fingers flinched on reflex, and after what seemed like an eternity of silence, the proud engine suddenly roared to glorious life, then slowed to steady purr that would put even the fattest feline to shame.  Hester threw her hands in the air, as if to receive the applause of some invisible audience, grinning like a damn maniac.<br/><br/>It was just at that single exultant moment of success that the lights flickered off, the radio in the next room fizzled out, the phones the rich boy's friends were busying themselves with went utterly silent, and the car gave one last mournful rumble before dying with an ugly note of finality.<br/><br/>They sure as hell couldn't see each other in that blackness, but they could all tell which direction Hester was in by the stream of some of the meanest, foulest, and possibly utterly fabricated spitting out of her mouth.<br/><br/>"What the hell just happened?"<br/>"The shit?  I paid for global service on this piece of crap!  Anyone else lose their signal?"<br/>"Somebody turn on a light!"<br/>"You bitch, you killed my fucking car!"<br/><br/>"Shut it!" Hester snapped, blindly attempting to shove the nearest punk and only managed to send a cart full of tools clattering to the ground with a resounding crash.  "Everybody just shut it!  It's just a damn blackout, not the end of the damn world.  Hey jackass, you've got a lighter, right?"<br/><br/>Silence, then the sound of shifting cloth.  "Yeah yeah,<span class="bbc_size" style="font-size: 6pt;">bitch,</span>I got this."  There was a click, a flash of sparks, then nothing.  The boy cursed, then tried a dozen more times in quick succession.  "The hell?  Was working fine just two minutes ago.  Must be out of oil."<br/><br/>"Of course it is," she grumbled, rubbing the space between her eyes to ward off an increasingly painful ache.  "Gerry, where do we keep the flashlights?"<br/><br/>There was the dry noise of creaking upholstery and the slam of a door as the man got up out of his seat and felt his way around to her side.  "You had a cart on your end, right?  Should be one on the middle shelf."<br/><br/>"You mean the cart I just smashed the fuck out of?"<br/><br/>"That'd be the one, klutz."<br/><br/>"Shit."<br/><br/>The next few minutes were spent scrabbling about the floor in the dark trying to discern vague outlines while the four boys decided to be completely useless and whine to one another.  Hester uttered a momentary cry of triumph upon finding one of the torches, only to find that the switch did absolutely nothing no matter how angrily she flipped it.<br/><br/>"Hell of a damn time for you to forget to change the batteries on this thing, Gerry!"<br/><br/>Gerry blew her off, getting uneasily to his feet.  "You were the last one to use it, as<em>I</em>recall.  That old geezer Jacob's junker of a car had a leak underneath, remember?  Didn't you notice the light was getting low then?"<br/><br/>"Shit.  It seemed fine to me at the time."<br/><br/>Hester paused, running a hand across her chin and glancing around through the murk before making her way out towards the blanketing grayness just outside the building.  The scattering of stars at least made it possible to discern one face from another, and hers was taut with steadily mounting concern.  It was only then that she noticed the distant baying of dogs and the faintest hints of screaming over the hill.<br/><br/>"It's not the end of the world, you said," Gerry said as he came up behind her, only half-joking.  Even a wise-ass like him looked a little shaken.<br/><br/>"Well, wouldn't be the first time I was wrong," she muttered in reply, more to herself than anything.<em>'Just what the fuck is going on in this town?'</em><br/><br/>The two deliberated in hushed voices for a moment, then turned to the four boys.  Their two phones were just as dead, and the landlines likely hadn't fared much better.  Out-of-towners could stay in the break room for the time being, while the two mechanics would make their way to the police station to try and figure out just what the hell was going on.  From the looks of it Marty's place had been spared whatever chaos was going on elsewhere due to being apart from the rest of the town, so it would likely be safe for the time being.<br/><br/>Unfortunately, they wouldn't have any of it.<br/><br/>"Like shit we're going to stay here!" the eldest one said.  He seemed to speak for the rest of them, who were all too cowed by the situation to do much more than echo him.  "You wrecked my damn car!  I'm not letting either of you assholes out of my sight."<br/><br/>Hester, too exhausted to argue, gave up without a fight.  "Fine.  We'll play babysitter for you idiots.  Just try not to get lost in the dark, because I sure as shit ain't going to come back for you."<br/><br/>Gerry grinned at her in the dark.  "Have I ever told you how much I love how that New York accent comes through when you're being all hospitable?"<br/><br/>One hard punch to the shoulder later and the unlikely gang of confused survivors were on their way down the road back into town, completely unprepared for what lay in wait for them.  It was eventually decided that they'd stop off at Marty's house since it wasn't too far out of their way and had called in sick, thinking it best to check in on the big lug.