False Alarm

Three teenage boys, a dog, and an adventure at a vacant construction site…

I blinked my eyes clear, squinting at the clock. Five AM, Sunday morning. What woke me up? Dad's voice echoed from the hallway, distinctly puzzled.

“You're what now? I'm sorry, ma'am, it's the weekend – I can't get anyone to go out there… the Environmental Impact Analysis Report is holding up construction for the next three weeks… are you sure you can hear it across six lanes of Interstate traffic?”

Her sharp, high-pitched responses pierced my bedroom walls.

“Ok, ok, ma'am, we'll see that it's taken care of immediately. Thank you for letting us know. Yes… Yes… Goodbye.”

I opened my door and almost smacked into my younger brother Joe coming out of his room. Dad was rubbing his forehead and staring at his phone like it was a snake.

“Boys, the fire alarms have been going off at the unfinished rest area for the past thirty-six hours. That was the cleaning lady from the old one across the highway. Claims she and the travelers are being bothered by the noise and the flashing lights. Honestly, she sounded like a fire alarm herself.”

“Should we call the fire department?” I asked.

Dad shook his head.

“Nah, if it hasn't burned down yet, it's not a real fire. Frank, you and Joe drive out there and see what's going on. I couldn't possibly do it myself. I was planning on binge watching Netflix today.”

“Wow, can we take the company truck with the big orange lights?” Joe's eyes widened.

Dad yawned, tossed me the keys, and stumbled back into his bedroom. Joe and I exchanged glances.

“Come on, we've got a mission!” Joe whooped and slid down the bannister.

I tore through the fridge, grabbed anything that wasn't raw, stuffed it into a paper bag and tossed it into the backseat of the utility truck by way of breakfast. Joe scrambled into the passenger side, and we were off, our spinning orange lights sending oscillating waves of glow through the predawn streets.

“What should we do if we can't get the alarms disarmed?”

“We can set a fire so they're not false alarms,” Joe mumbled through a blueberry muffin.

“Bro, Dad's rest area project is funded by the national debt. We can't go burning it down!”

“There's gotta be a killswitch somewhere. Say, let's stop by Chet's and see if he wants to join the fun.”

“Two's company,” I humphed. “We're not waking him and Duchess up at this hour.”

Joe's phone beeped.

“Good news,” he announced. “Chet's already awake and looking for adventures.”

Our slightly overweight friend and his equally pudgy beagle pirated a chunk of real estate in the backseat, hauling in a ginormous, sticky cooler stuffed with food and drinks.

“Do we get to wear hardhats?” he asked, pawing through Dad's construction gear like Indiana Jones. “Oh look, here they are!”

My innards were going off like the alarms we were supposed to quell. This was gonna be fun… Not.

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Going down the Interstate ramp, we were instantly plunged into fog as impenetrable as an Antarctic snowbank. The truck's orange lights bounced back into our faces, turning Joe and Chet into grinning Jack-o'-lanterns snickering nervously at themselves in the mirrors.

I kept my eyes on the road, dodging freight haulers blasting through the speed limit like rocket ships. The ten miles to the rest area might as well have been an interminable circumnavigation of the moon.

“Look, it's coming up,” Chet shouted, jabbing his arm in front of us as the high beams lit up a sign in florescent green: Rest Area Two Miles. A ragged trash bag was the road crew's attempt to hide it from travelers. Further signs, electronic orange marquises, announced the unvarnished truth in alternating phrases: Rest Area Closed – blink – Next Rest Area – blink – Unknown.

The first indications of a structure – or a UFO – ahead were the row of white strobes piercing the fog, blinking regularly like runway lights. From class drills, I knew those were the fire alarms. We couldn't hear them… Yet.

I skidded past barrels and cones like a stunt driver and stopped on the off ramp, bumper against a row of barricades. Joe and Chet got out to drag them away. Duchess whined in the backseat, probably already picking up the unnatural sound waves.

When they'd made room to get the truck through, I edged down the ramp, Chet and Joe trotting alongside. The gathering of buildings unfolded before us, shrouded in fog: angular, stark white and ultramodern minimalist like a child's school project in poster board. The construction stalled at about 85%, according to Dad, leaving me with a clean slate of unblemished concrete parking spaces.

Stepping out, I was smacked in the face with an overwhelming swamp stench, dank and muddy. My imagination populated the low-lying area with hungry alligators. Would we get out of this alive?

BEEZ, BEEZ, BEEZ!

Interrupting and amplifying my anxiety like giant angry hornets.

BEEZ, BEEZ, BEEZ!

I understood how it could be heard across six lanes of traffic. The only thing I didn't understand was how we hadn't heard it at home!

BEEZ, BEEZ, BEEZ!

“Yikes!” Chet covered his ears. “Don't let Duchess out of the truck!”

She curled into a corner, as eager to roam as an injured snail.

The rest area was divided into two long main buildings labeled as men's and women's restrooms. Another structure lurched sideways, maybe where the cleaners and security would hang out. A bunch of weirdly sloped roofs scattered around the property appeared to cover picnic tables. One larger roof-over had a sign declaring “Vending and Refreshments.”

“The office,” I rasped, trying to vocalize between the triple outbursts. “We gotta find the control panel!”

I rushed towards the sideways middle building, Chet and Joe stumbling after. Even without any indication of fire, the screaming alarms filled the air with painful urgency. The office door was locked. I stood directly underneath –

BEEZ, BEEZ, BEEZ!

– fumbling with Dad's keys as my brain rattled inside my skull. The very last key on the ring sent the door flying open, revealing a spartan, empty room, fire sprinklers sending sheets of water streaming over the threshold.

“Good gravy!” Chet shouted. “You could float a boat in here.”

“Hey, a free water park.” Joe positioned himself under a sprinkler head.

I sloshed through the puddles, heading for a metal panel in the back wall. Yanking it open revealed a circuit board packed with switches, wires, fuses and buttons. I squinted, trying to read the labels in the intermittent lightning flashes of the strobes. Why didn't I grab a flashlight from Dad's toolbox? And wasn't there some rule about never messing with electricity while standing in water?

“Don't just stand there – try them all!”

Chet elbowed alongside me and slapped down three random switches with one motion. Nothing changed. I spotted a keyhole, and a lightbulb went off in my noise-addled, reverberating brain. I jangled through the keyring again, found a little one with a red cover, jammed it into that keyhole, and twisted it like a buzzard's neck.

Silence shuddered down on us like a wet blanket, except that the sprinklers turned off. Chet smacked me on the shoulder.

“Yay! We did it!”

I rubbed my ears, still ringing with ghost alarms.

“Shucks, I was taking my morning shower.” Joe wrung out his drenched clothes. “Why'd ya have to turn it off?”

I groaned, took him by the slimy shirt and hauled him out into the open air, where dawn was beginning to whiten the fog, seemingly only making it even thicker. Chet started peeling off his own equally wet shirt.

“You think your dad's got any high-vis clothes we could wear?”

Ten minutes and a ransacked truck later, we would have been visible from the moon, in baggy neon green and florescent orange reflective uniforms. Duchess barked, tail wagging, running circles around us.

She stopped short, set her nose to the ground, and darted away towards the men's room. The restrooms were built without doors, only a couple of walls offsetting the interior from the outside.

“I told you not to let her out,” Chet huffed, taking off after her, clutching a leash and a ham sandwich.

Inside, Duchess ran up and down the row of stalls, her frantic yelps echoing off sleek tiled walls. We splashed and floundered in standing water, trying to catch her, our reflections pale and eerie in the mirrors as daylight crept in. Toilets automatically flushed themselves as we dodged in and out, tripping over each other.

Something lithe and rodential popped between my feet, leaped onto a counter, and started chattering, twitching its puffed tail.

“It's a squirrel – that's what Duchess is after!”

“Yeah, I think I can figure that out,” Joe snickered. “Maybe the squirrels set off the fire alarms!”

When the fat beagle put her front paws on the counter in an attempt to reach the squirrel, I grabbed her collar. Chet snapped her leash on. The squirrel squawked like it was laughing at Duchess, then ran away along the line of automatic faucets, setting each one spraying a needle-like mist incapable of washing a flea's knees.

I leaned in close to read the placards posted at the sinks: Ultra High Efficiency Plumbing to Conserve Water Resources.

“What good is conserved water if your hands are germy?” I wondered.

We headed back outside to find early riser grackles dive-bombing the truck, sending Duchess into a yelping frenzy again. Chet dragged her towards the Vending and Refreshments enclosure. I pulled another ham sandwich out, tore it up and threw it under a tree to distract the messy, squalling birds.

“Hey, don't waste that,” Joe protested.

I handed him another one to keep him happy. We stood against the wall, gazing contemplatively at the lonely, unfinished structures.

“Mission accomplished. Dad will be proud of us,” I mused.

“Good thinking on my part, of course,” Joe mumbled, his mouth full. “Couldn't have done it without me.”

“Yeah right. If it was up to you – ”

My phone rang. It was Dad.

“How's it going?”

“Fine and dandy like sour candy,” I said. “I figured it out all by myself. Your red key disarms the system.”

“Excellent. Is anything amiss?”

“Aside from a miniature Niagra Falls from the sprinklers, squirrels occupying the loo, and grackles galore, no, everything's super duper.”

Joe made faces at me because I claimed all the credit. He was about to interject when Chet blundered up, huffing and puffing.

“Come on, let's get outta here. I checked the vending machines – they're empty!”

“Oh, the horrors,” I grinned at him.

He reached out to swat me. Duchess yanked on the leash, pulling him sideways. He slipped, gasping, his hand jerking out for balance. It landed squarely on a big red button on the wall, labeled “Fire Emergency Alert System.”

BEEZ, BEEZ, BEEZ!

“Not again!”

BEEZ, BEEZ, BEEZ!

“Frank, did you just set that off?” I could tell Dad was holding the phone away from his ear as the piercing alarm mutilated the airwaves.

BEEZ, BEEZ, BEEZ!

I facepalmed. Duchess howled in dismay. Joe leaned against the wall, choking on laughter. If any of this was funny, I'd eat my hardhat.

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Words: 1850.
Written for: "Journey Through Genres: Official Contest" 
Prompt: must be within the Comedy genre.