Sandy slammed her head back against the wall, startled by a sudden noise from outside. She looked over at Greg, kneeling beside her on their bedroom floor. His head was bowed and he hadn't responded to whatever noise she'd heard. She reached out to touch his shoulder, causing him to jerk slightly and focus on her.

"What?" he said in a thick voice, just coming back to himself. He looked up at the TV, which showed a static screen that read 'Technical Difficulties; Please Stand By', then looked up at Sandy. "What's going on?"

Sandy shook her head as she said, "I don't know. I heard something loud outside, but I don't know what it was. We were watching Tonight!, then I guess we fell asleep?"

Greg stood up, his knees and back popping as he did. He looked over the room - the crumpled bedding, the dirty ashtray and empty water glasses on the nightstand, the clothes leading from the door to the bed - and saw a good Friday night. But he couldn't remember much of it, just a little bit of Johnny and some woman he didn't know. He sat on the bed and pulled Sandy next to him. "Do you know what happened last night?"

Sandy shook her head, then leaned in against him. "I remember coming home, and coming into bed with you. After that, we watched Tonight!. I think there was something wrong with it, but it's kind of a blur. Feels like we drank too much, but I don't think we did?"

"Something wrong with the show?" She nodded and he picked up the remote. He flipped to the DVR and started last night's show, rewatching the monologue they had missed. He chuckled at some of it, although the political stuff was getting a bit old to him. As Johnny began to introduce the guests, the screen pixelated, and in a few seconds the message about technical difficulties that was still showing appeared on the screen. He hit the fast-forward button, and in a little over a minute, the entire show had flown by with that message the only thing during the run.

"There was more than that," Sandy said, sitting up straight on the bed. "I know there was. There was a woman, and a horrible commercial, and something about changes, but I can't remember."

"I remember her. Her hat covered her face, but you could see her smile, and one eye, right?"

Before she could answer, they heard the distant wail of an approaching siren. She got up and went to the window, moving the slats of the blinds apart to get a look outside. There was a slight glow in the west, towards the city and the siren sound, that flickered against the darkness. He realized abruptly that he couldn't see the city lights. "I think there's a fire, and the lights are out downtown." Sandy joined him, twisting the rod to open the blinds up. Their neighborhood still had power, and they could see other windows with shades pulled aside or blinds opened.

They stood in silence for a few minutes, watching the glow and listening to the sirens converge. They were far enough away that they never got very loud, converging on the growing light in the distance. Eventually, Sandy shut the blinds and walked to the closet, dragging out their suitcases. Greg looked at her questioningly, and she said as she went back into the closet, "If that fire keeps growing at the rate it is, I want to be ready to get out." Greg nodded and went into the bathroom to grab the toothbrushes.

The eastern sky was just starting to brighten when Sandy was finally able to fall back to sleep, curled up against Greg's chest on the bed. He had the blinds fully open by then, watching the rise and fall of the fire in the city. It was almost three before the light had stopped expanding and another hour before it began to retract. Now, two hours later with the sun beginning to come up, the glow from the fire was fading beneath the greater light.

Greg was starting to doze off as well when a booming crash shattered the quiet morning. A flash of light followed as he saw a power line hitting the ground on the highway down the hill. He slid out from under Sandy as she woke up from the noise, pushing aside the unneeded bags as he went into the closet. He grabbed his camera case from the top shelf and the bag of lenses. He went to the window as he pulled the camera out, setting down the bag of lenses on the sill and unzipped the top. He started with a 150-500 mm zoom lens, trying to focus on the sparking wires, but changed to a 600 mm lens after not quite getting there.

He looked into the viewfinder and saw the battery indicator flashing nearly empty. He focused in on the wreck, seeing an SUV broken beneath the fallen pole. Both driver-side doors were open, but he couldn't see what was happening on that side. He could see clearly into the passenger seat, the zoom lens bringing it as close as the backyard. The woman strapped into the seat was clearly dead, her neck twisted and torn open. The windshield had shattered under the impact and fallen across her body.

A movement drew his attention, and he snapped a couple of pictures before swinging the lens across the car. A man was stumbling away from the car, blood streaming from a cut across his head. He ignored the battery alert and snapped photos capturing the pain and fear on the man's face as he looked back at the wreckage. Greg followed his gaze to the back door, and realized he could make out a pale hand lying on the ground just past the car.

Based on the size and the pink painted fingernails, he guessed that it belonged to a tween girl. He snapped a picture of the hand and waited, watching it for any movement. The seconds stretched out with nothing changing, and Greg became more and more sure he had taken a picture of a second dead body that morning.

He barely bit back a scream when he felt the hand on his shoulder, but he lowered the camera and pulled Sandy in tight. "Bad wreck took down a power line on the highway," he told her. "Looks like there might be some serious injuries. Can you call 911 and tell them?"

She nodded and grabbed her phone off the nightstand, dialing the emergency number. Greg heard a busy signal coming from the phone as he raised the camera again. He found the wreck quickly, but couldn't spot the hand. He swung towards the man, rushing his movements and overshooting back and forth several times before being able to focus on the scene.

The girl was alive and had crawled across the gap to join the man. She had grabbed on to him and was holding on tight to his chest. The man's head wound continued to bleed freely and Greg couldn't tell if the blood on the girl was from her or the man. As he watched, the man slumped down, gravity taking over. The girl looked to be screaming between shaking and kissing the man, trying to wake him up. Greg saw the battery indicator was flat dead, the camera only useful as a telescope at this point. He settled the view on the girl, watching while he waited for Sandy to connect with emergency services.

He could hear Sandy pacing in the background, the drone of the busy signal continuing to roll. He knew Sandy would be fighting the urge to hang up and call back, but they both knew that a busy signal from 911 would still connect as soon as a line opened so she would pace to keep from hanging up and redialing. He kept focus on the girl as the minutes felt like hours.

He didn't know how long it took, but the sun still hadn't cleared the Santa Cruz mountains so it couldn't have been that long. At almost the same time he heard Sandy starting to talk to someone, a woman entered the camera frame. She quickly approached the girl, who pulled back from her approach. She stopped and knelt before the girl, and Greg dropped the camera, switching back to the shorter zoom to get a better view of what was going on. When he got back he could see a sedan parked behind the SUV, well away from the still sparking power lines. A tall, heavy-set man was behind the woman, his body language understandably worried and tentative. The woman had moved forward a couple more steps, and the girl was not pulling away from her.

Sandy was explaining what was going on to dispatch and Greg shouted that a sedan had pulled up to help. Sandy put the phone on speaker and walked close to him so he could narrate the events. "The SUV is a Chevy, don't know the model, can't see the plate. Woman in the passenger seat looks dead. The power pole crushed the hood and the wires are sparking in the road, clear of the cars. A sedan parked behind it, I can make out the first three letters of the plate, AZ8. Looks like an i4. There is a tall, heavy-set man by the car, dressed in dark pants and a long-sleeved shirt. Collar-length dark hair, short beard. The man who crawled from the SUV looks dead, too - a lot of blood. There's a little girl that crawled from the SUV, too, she's still moving. The woman that just showed up is talking to here, and it looks like she's getting through."

"Thank you, sir," the dispatcher said. "Can you stay on the line and keep updating me while I try to get someone routed there?"

"Yeah, but it looks like it won't matter for long. The girl is reaching out to the woman, and, yeah, she's going to her. The woman has picked her up, and it looks like she's headed to the passenger seat. The man got in the driver's seat. OK, they're backing up and turning around. Looks like they're headed towards the city, but I've lost them."

"Thank you, sir." Sandy took them off speaker and went back to the call, telling them they'd be available if needed. She hung up while Greg was dismantling the camera and ejecting the memory card.

Sandy set the phone down on the nightstand and locked eyes with Greg. He took a long step towards her and wrapped her in his arms as she sobbed heavily. "I'm so sorry you had to see that, Greg," she whispered in his ear. He squeezed tighter, the fact that he had just seen a dead body and almost certainly watched a man die finally sinking in. He shuddered as the adrenaline he didn't know he was riding on left his body. He sat heavily on the bed, letting go of Sandy and holding his head in his hands. Sandy sat on the bed beside him and put her arm around his shoulder, letting him lean in and release.