Fallen Into Darkness Read online

  Chapter One

  It was early on a Monday morning and Robert Worth had just finished a five-mile run under the big sky of Helena, Montana. It was still dark, just before sunrise, when he began his jog, and that gave him a chance to admire the beautiful stars in the clear dawn sky. The sun had just begun to break the horizon, fading the stars slowly away, as he finished his morning run. He truly enjoyed running early in Montana, especially the way the air smelled. It was clean, fresh, country air.

  Cooling down from his run, he stepped off the sidewalk and onto the far end of his hotel’s parking lot, slowly walking to the main entrance as he caught his breath. The hotel was his temporary home for two weeks while he was in town on business. He stopped, turned his back to the hotel, and with his hands on his hips, stood quietly and let the cool breeze remove the heat under his sweat-soaked clothes. It was nearly summer, but the air was crisp on his skin.

  The rising sun was just breaking the eastern horizon, its halo slowly cresting the silhouette of the Rocky Mountains. Tilting his head toward the sky, he closed his eyes and absorbed the peacefulness of the silent morning. Suddenly, with his eyes still closed, he sensed a flash of colored light rising from the northern horizon. He opened his eyes to a spectacular assortment of meandering colored lights, curling free from the silhouette of the Rocky Mountains and arcing up across the sky, intermingling and dancing with an intense brightness. Fluorescent hues extended from the northern to the southern horizon in an instant. The celestial lights were so bright that as he turned to the south, he noticed that his body cast a faint shadow on the hotel’s parking lot. The tortuous lights in the sky were approaching a frenzy of brightness and color. He mumbled under his breath at how amazing this was, and, looking for his cell phone, he patted the pockets of his sweatpants to find it and record a video of the impromptu light show. Finding the outline of his phone in his right pocket, he swiftly retrieved the device and lifted it toward the sky to capture the luminous ballet unfolding above.

  Robert repeatedly tried to turn the device on and noticed that the cell phone maintained a blank screen. He thought that this was strange because he could remember turning it on earlier to access the clock to time his run. He fumbled with the power button several more times before acquiescing to the dead phone. He dropped it back into his pocket and continued to stare above, slowly turning in a circle to fully capture the image of the colored lights that had painted the early morning sky.

  Suddenly, he noticed a loud humming sound. He turned to see sparks violently flying from a transformer suspended on an electric utility pole not more than a block away. Then, just as suddenly, the transformer exploded into a ball of fire. The explosion made him flinch and he turned reflexively to cover his face. For a brief moment, the flash of light from the explosion cast shadows across the parking lot, then an arc of sparks was all that remained where the transformer was attached. The electrical transmission lines were on the ground, arching and writhing like venomous snakes striking at their prey.

  He cautiously lowered his hands and looked around again. Gradually the intensity of the aurora began to diminish. As the glow in the sky slowly faded away, he looked to see if anyone else was witnessing this. Across the parking lot was a road parallel with the hotel. He saw a car, with the driver’s side door and hood open, stopped on the road. A man wearing dark coveralls and a baseball cap turned backwards was bent over the front of the car, cursing into the engine bay. Turning back to the hotel’s main entrance, Robert noticed that all the exterior lights were off and the hotel’s automatic sliding glass front doors were in the open position. Walking toward the hotel’s entrance, he could see that inside the lobby was dark, too. As he stepped into the lobby, he could just barely make out the night clerk standing at the front desk. It was the same clerk that had greeted him on his return from his other early morning runs and Robert felt embarrassed that he still did not know the young man’s name.

  “Good morning,” the clerk said, as he passed a cheap plastic flashlight from one hand to another. “Sorry, lights are out. Hopefully, they’ll come on soon. You better get your coffee while it’s still hot.”

  As the clerk spoke, he gestured, using the flashlight to point at the complimentary breakfast area. There were a few people fumbling around next to the breakfast buffet, trying to do their best with no electric lights. Robert stepped into the dining area and retrieved the cell phone from his sweatpants again. After sitting down, he tried turning it on once more, this time to use the glowing screen as a flashlight. His frustration grew each time he pressed the power button. He knew it was fully charged and wondered why the phone, being less than a month old, would have failed this soon. Robert glanced up just as Kyle Brown stepped up next to him at the small table.

  “Mine threw craps, too,” Kyle commented. Kyle, like Robert , was an information technology consultant, and they were traveling together for the same job. They had traveled to Helena with two other coworkers, Henry and Richard.

  Robert and Kyle did not fit the nerdy computer geek stereotype. Robert was physically fit with a rugged physique. He had just turned forty and was older than Kyle, who had recently graduated from a university in the Midwest. Although Kyle was a jogger, routinely exercised, and was very physically fit, he chose not to run with Robert . He never could maintain Robert ’s fast pace. Henry was older and nearing retirement. The joke around the office was that Henry’s first job was programming an abacus. Richard and Henry fit nicely into the nerdy stereotype. They never exercised, worshipped cable television, and loved to eat junk food.

  “Your phone isn’t working either?” asked Robert .

  Kyle shook his head, adding, “I tried to turn on my laptop to check my email, and…nothing.”

  “No email?” Robert asked.

  “No computer. It’s dead,” replied Kyle.

  Robert looked down at his cell phone again and tried to think of an explanation why Kyle’s phone and laptop would have died, too. “I bet it was a power surge. Your phone and computer were plugged into an outlet during the night and I bet there was a power surge.” Robert was anxiously tapping his phone on the table. “They got fried. That explains the blackout. Something must be wrong at a power station nearby.”

  “Nope, my laptop and phone weren’t plugged in,” Kyle replied, shaking his head in frustration.

  The orange glow of the morning sun came through the dusty windows of the hotel’s breakfast area. The glare from the sunrise reflected off the wall clock’s glass cover, capturing Robert ’s attention. He had just realized the clock’s hands had not moved since he sat down. Baffled, he stared at the clock on the wall and could not believe the incredible coincidence.

  “Kyle, I’m going back to my room. You can use my laptop to get your email. Sit tight, I’ll be back in a flash.”

  Robert stood up and briskly went into the hallway and toward his door. He slid his keycard to disengage the electric lock to his room, but got no response. He tried swiping the card slow, fast, upward, and finally downward through the slot. It would not work. Frustrated, he mumbled to himself, “Shit...happy Monday.”

  Feeling defeated, Robert slowly returned to the hotel’s breakfast room that he left just moments earlier. Kyle, eating a bowl of cold cereal, had moved to a table closer to the large picture windows that were now letting in the first few rays of morning sunlight.

  Robert held up his hotel door’s keycard and said, “Guess what? The electric lock doesn’t work.”

  Kyle looked at his own keycard and asked, “Then how do you get into your room?”

  “I’m going to find out,” Robert said, as he turned to go to the front desk.

  There were several people standing by the desk, all with the same complaint. They had
closed their room doors and now, since the keycards did not work, they could not get back in. The clerk looked flustered, confused, and fatigued. He was doing the best he could under the circumstances.

  “I’m sorry, everyone,” explained the clerk, “Maintenance should be here by now. My phones are down and I can’t get hold of anyone.”

  Robert knew the clerk just had begun working at the hotel recently and only worked the night shift. The young fellow probably could not help him, but he felt obligated to interject himself into the conversation. He stepped up to the desk and held his keycard up for the clerk to see. “Isn’t there a real key to use in the door in this type of situation?”

  “Yeah, but I don’t have the tools to take the faceplate off the door lock to access the key hole. The maintenance staff has that and they know how to do it. I’m really sorry, the hotel manager, maintenance, and housekeeping should have been here by now. This is totally weird—”

  The clerk stopped speaking as he recognized the tall man with the backward baseball cap and coveralls coming through the front lobby. It was Lee, the hotel’s maintenance man, the same man Robert had seen on the road with the stalled car. Robert stepped back from the desk because it was obvious the clerk needed to speak with Lee.

  Lee stopped at the front desk. Looking frustrated, he asked, “Where’s the manager?”

  “I don’t know. Should’ve been here by now,” the clerk replied, as he shrugged his shoulders.

  Lee pointed out the hotel’s open front doors and said, “My car is dead. I tried to call for a tow, but my cell phone is dead, too.” Lee continued to point in the direction of his stalled car. “It’s on the side of the road for now and I can’t even turn on the flashers.” Lee threw his hands into the air to punctuate his frustration.

  “Sorry about that, but it’s bad in here, too.” The night clerk shrugged his shoulders once more and said, “Here’s the situation. The door locks have failed for all of the people standing here. We need to get a key to each room.”

  Feeling overwhelmed with the request, Lee took a deep breath, exhaled slowly, and rolled his eyes. As he took off the baseball cap and stuffed it into the front pocket of his coveralls, he said to the clerk, “I’ll get the toolbox and remove the faceplates. Get the keys ready.” Just as Lee started walking away, he stopped, turned around, and asked, “Did anybody see the light show outside?”

  Robert responded, “Northern lights?”

  Swiftly, Lee turned and walked toward the maintenance room, speaking over his shoulder. “That’s my guess. It was better than anything I saw when I was stationed in Alaska.” Lee raised his hand and extended one finger upward. “Give me a minute, I’ll be right back.”

  Robert went back to the table where Kyle was sitting, and discovered that Richard was seated there, too. Robert sat down and gave them both an update on the door locks. Richard had a very different personality from Robert and Kyle. He was not known as a pleasant person, and the only reason they tolerated him was the simple fact that they had to work together. Richard was overweight, smoked, drank too much alcohol, and ate plenty of junk food. He was forty, like Robert , but anyone would guess he was at least sixty. He did not look healthy, with his yellowed teeth and bloodshot eyes. Richard sat at the table nervously fondling a pack of cigarettes and eating a sugar doughnut.

  “There was a bright light coming in through the window and it woke my ass up,” Richard mumbled, speaking with his mouth full of sugar doughnut, then sipping the cold coffee. “I thought it was the sunrise. My alarm didn’t go off, I have no power in my room, my laptop is down, the phone in the room doesn’t work, and my cell phone won’t work, either.”

  “Join the club,” Kyle responded, trying not to show his irritation. Richard smelled like an ashtray and was spitting doughnut crumbs as he spoke.

  Leaning back in his chair to distance himself from Richard, Robert said, “I haven’t been back in my room yet, but I can’t wait to find out if my laptop is down, too.”

  As the three men sat talking at their table, huddled around their dead cell phones, nobody noticed the short stocky man that had been standing close enough to hear their conversation. His head was shaved and he was wearing military camouflage. The insignia indicated that he was in the Air Force. The man was standing with his back to them and looking out the large windows. He turned to look at Robert , and spoke.

  “I bet your laptop is fried along with everything else electronic in your room.”

  Robert delayed his response. He was not sure if the stranger was talking to him. He quickly looked around and noticed no one else close by that the man could have been talking to. “Really? Why do you say that?” Robert asked, looking at the name and rank displayed on the stranger’s shirt. His rank was colonel and his shirt was unbuttoned and not tucked into his camouflaged pants. This was uncharacteristic of Robert ’s mental stereotype of military personnel.

  “I’m Colonel Sheppherd.” The colonel extended his hand to greet Robert , and Robert met his hand halfway. “Did anyone here see those lights in the sky? The aurora borealis?” the colonel asked, making eye contact with all three of the seated men.

  “Yeah, I was outside jogging,” said Robert .

  “After that, didn’t you notice electronic devices aren’t working and there’s no power?”

  Robert , Kyle, and Richard looked at each other and shrugged their shoulders.

  The colonel said, “It was an electromagnetic pulse, or EMP, that fried electronic devices and took the power grid down.” Colonel Sheppherd pointed to the dead cell phones on the table. “Like your phones.” Then he pointed toward the main lobby doors. “Outside, there was a transformer that blew apart. The EMP induced a current on the power lines and it exploded. Take a walk around. You’ll see what I’m talking about.”

  As the colonel was speaking, the hotel clerk stepped around the corner and shined a flashlight from the lobby, pointing the beam of light at Robert . “Let me know when you’re ready to have your door key,” said the clerk.

  Robert gave him the okay sign and a quick wave.

  Richard turned to the colonel and said, “Okay, dumb shit; I just saw a flashlight that was obviously still working.” Richard was obnoxiously shaking his head in disagreement. “You keep talking about your alien invasion. I need a smoke.”

  Richard stood up and grabbed two more sugar doughnuts from the counter. He noticed a roll of aluminum foil that had been used to wrap biscuits, still cold from the dead refrigerator. Richard pulled out a two-foot length of the foil and went back to the table. He put the foil sheet on the table in front of the colonel and said, “If you make a hat out of this, the aliens can’t read your mind.” Richard turned and walked away, holding a cigarette in one hand and two doughnuts in the other.

  Ignoring the comment, Colonel Sheppherd folded the foil into a plane and tossed it at Richard’s back. By the time the foil plane hit Richard, he had stuffed both doughnuts into his mouth.

  “As you can see, Richard is an ass,” Kyle said.

  The colonel nodded his head and said, “Gentlemen, I’m not joking. I saw the aurora from my window this morning, and then I went to have a walk around. It really happened. Anything electric, with a computer chip, is ruined. That flashlight you just saw doesn’t have a computer chip.” He paused to take a sip of the cold coffee. “Most cars, jet planes, satellites, the trucks that bring food to the grocery store, you name it, anything that supports our modern way of life is now history.” He took another sip of cold black coffee and wondered if that was the last coffee he would ever drink. “Take my advice and bug out now. Get home to your families. When people realize there is no more food showing up at the grocery store and the cities can’t pump clean water into the water towers, the population is going to panic. That is when, shall we say, the shit hits the fan. I give it three days to total chaos.”

  Kyle asked, “What makes you so sure?”

  “I was at a military conference about a year ago. We were there to specif
ically discuss the effects of an EMP. From a military perspective, a nuclear device can trigger an EMP. One good nuclear weapon high above the center of the United States would send us back to the stone age.” He angrily tossed his empty coffee cup into a large trashcan by the wall. “Our society is dependent on high technology and we’re not prepared for an event like this. Once an EMP destroys the power grid and micro circuitry, it is, literally, lights out. We were warned, but nobody did anything to harden our infrastructure.”

  Robert sat stoically, listening to the colonel and Kyle speak. He was trying to mentally digest what the colonel was explaining.

  Kyle nervously asked, “So you think we were hit by a nuclear weapon? I saw the flash of colored lights, but I didn’t hear an explosion or see a mushroom cloud.”

  The colonel leaned forward toward the table, placing his palms flat down on it and looking them both in the eyes and with dire conviction, explained how there did not have to be a bomb. The colonel believed it was a massive solar event that he referred to as a coronal mass ejection. He told Robert and Kyle that solar storms cause northern lights, and a solar disturbance that could cause the dark sky to glow as bright as the noon sun had to be massive.

  “Three days at the most. Heed my warning.” The colonel stood up, paused, and looked out the large window, noticing it was finally past daybreak. “And then there will be total chaos, especially in the urban areas. Those living in rural areas, not so dependent on the grid, will not have it as bad. I would suggest getting home to your families as soon as possible.” The colonel yawned, stretched, and put his hands on his hips. The cold coffee was not strong enough for him. “My plan is to get to the nearest military base, as quickly as possible, and pull rank to get in.”

  Robert asked, “How do you plan on getting there? You can’t drive or fly there.”

  The colonel shrugged his shoulders and said, “I’ll start walking and then maybe, if I’m lucky, I’ll steal a bicycle.”

  Sarcastically, Kyle said, “Then get thrown in jail like a criminal and get kicked out of the military.”