Among the thick trees and under the stars, the darkness began to make itself known. Back in Boston, there wasn't a night that went by where a person couldn't see at least a mile down the road, but Oregon was different. If it hadn't been for the hurricane lamp hanging on the porch, Allison wouldn't have been able to see anything at all. Although it was unsettling, the doctor felt that it was something she would get used to and reasoned that she probably wouldn't be back through the mountains anytime soon. Portland was where she was going to be living, and that was urban as any other city around the United States.

Upon hearing that she wasn't as lost as had originally suspected, Allison felt a little silly. It was very typical for her to panic and assume the worst when she wasn't in control of something. That was different when it came to her work, she was calm and collected during her nights in the ER and never batted an eyelash when it came to pressure there. She supposed that change scared her, but it was a necessary evil.

“Is that something that happens often?” Allison asked, tilting her head slightly in order to look the man in the eye. He was a great deal taller than she was, and looked as though he often wrestled the bears he had just spoken of. She was happy to have him walk her back to her car. 

She motioned toward the direction of the SUV that she had left unlocked up the road, and slid her hands into the pockets of her burgundy sweater as they walked. “Portland doesn't seem like a city with electrical problems,” she mused.

Reaching her car, Allison got into the drivers side and left the door open as she stuck her key into the ignition. “Thanks for walking me,” she smiled as she turned her key. There was no sound of an engine roaring to life, no headlights automatically turning on, and no annoying [i]dinging[/i] sound that indicated a lack of seat belt; there was only silence. Her eyebrows knit together in confusion and Allison tried her key again, but nothing had changed. “I think my battery is dead?” She looked to the bearded man, clearly baffled. She hadn't left anything on when she had went up to his cabin for help, and it was hard to believe that a battery could die that quickly. 

The failure of her GPS, the lack of signal on her cell phone and the dead battery in her car were just a series of unfortunate coincidences, the events had nothing to do with the large power outage in Portland. Rather, that was what Allison told herself.