Constant Danger (Book 1): Fight The Darkness

by Westfield, Ryan

  “I could say the same about you, right?” said James. “Hey, isn’t this weird? I don’t see any lights at all. Aren’t there street lights here? And some houses off in the woods?”

  James didn’t drive by this way very often, since his typical commute was just from campus to his apartment in Northampton.

  “Yeah, I guess so,” said his professor distractedly. “Shit. How am I going to contact her then?”

  “Guess you’ll just have to wait ‘til you get home,” said James. “Whereabouts in Holyoke do you live?”

  James was getting more and more annoyed with his professor. He was half expecting his professor to say that he lived at the far end of Holyoke, so he was pleasantly relieved to hear that his professor didn’t live that far into town.

  He couldn’t wait to drop him off, head back to his own apartment, and relax. He didn’t feel like doing anything tonight at all. Maybe just watch some TV and hit the sack early.

  “Turn right here,” said Matt. “Weird. Looks like the power’s out here, too.... I’ve been in this neighborhood for five years and it’s never happened before.”

  “Yeah, weird,” said James, thinking that it was weird, but not really caring whether his professor was going to have power or not.

  “We’re almost there, just another block.... turn right again.... yeah, that’s right.”

  Just a few minutes later, they finally pulled up to Matt’s house. It was pitch black. There wasn’t a light on the whole block.

  In the headlights of James’s pickup, a few people could be seen milling outside down the street, apparently hanging out in their yards. They appeared to just be shadows. It seemed strange that they’d be hanging out outside, given the freezing temperatures.

  James was anxious for the moment when his professor would get the hell out of his truck.

  They said their goodbyes, Matt the professor got out, starting to walk toward his pitch-black house, and James began driving slowly away, headed down the dark street, breathing a sigh of relief.

  But he didn’t get far.

  He was driving by the yard with the people in it, trying to catch a glimpse of what it was they were up to.

  All of a sudden, someone ran out into the middle of the street, flailing their arms in the air, waving them back and forth. His headlights caught the person, casting a ghostly shadow-heavy light across the face, making it look angular and terrifying.

  James slammed on the brakes.

  The person, who he could now see was a man, dashed right toward his driver’s side door.

  “Help!” the man was yelling, as he started banging on the window. “Help!”

  James froze. He didn’t know what to do.

  It seemed like the man might really need help. But it also might be some sort of trap. Some sort of setup.

  James wasn’t too familiar with Holyoke. He only knew that it was a little more dangerous, a little more rough-and-tumble than Northampton. There were, for instance, plenty of heroin and Fentanyl addicts here, people who were always desperate for money and a way to obtain it.

  James, for the first time since he’d gotten to Massachusetts, really wished he had his gun on him. But, given the gun laws in Massachusetts, his Florida permit didn’t hold any water up here. His father had advised him to simply leave his guns at home in the family safe and James had done just that. Better to avoid legal trouble, if at all possible, especially considering that he hadn’t even started his career yet.

  James was trying to figure out what to do, wondering whether he should simply drive off, or whether he should try to help this person who might be in real need, when suddenly another person appeared at his window.

  At first, James couldn’t tell who it was. He thought it was just another stranger.

  Then, he saw the face.

  It was his professor, breathing hard, apparently having just run down from his house at the end of the block.

  “I can’t get inside!” he was saying loudly, crowding out the other man for space next to the window.

  Now there were two men banging on his window.

  James had about had enough.

  Then, suddenly, the first man, the stranger, turned to James’s professor, cocked his arm back, and swung at him hard. He delivered a punch that collided with his professor’s face.

  James’s professor went down. Hard. His body crumpled to the pavement, like he’d never taken a punch before in his life. And he probably hadn’t.

  Shit.

  Now James had to do something.

  5

  Meg

  Meg had driven through four towns, and the lights were off in all of them.

  There wasn’t a light on in a single house or building. There wasn’t a single streetlamp that was on.

  Something was going on.

  Something weird.

  Traffic was strange. There were still cars driving on the roads, but they weren’t driving like they normally would. They couldn’t drive normally, because all over, there were cars that were stopped in the middle of the road.

  There were plenty of people who’d gotten out of their cars, standing near them, looking puzzled.

  Meg would have slowed down to ask what was going on, but she felt nothing but an urgent rush to get her dad to the hospital. He was still unconscious. Still breathing shallowly.

  Pain was starting to flare through her. It was getting bad.

  Her insides hurt.

  And her heart was thumping wildly.

  She wasn’t sure she was thinking clearly. Not after what had happened. The image of the man’s head on the pavement was burned into her mind, as if she’d never be able to unsee it.

  She felt nauseous, completely disgusted at the man and his violent intentions. She couldn’t shake the feeling, just like she couldn’t shake the images.

  Meg had to weave around the cars that were stopped.

  Once or twice, she almost got into an accident, when another car came at her from an unexpected angle, or when she found herself needing to cross over into the opposite lane to get around the stopped cars.

  Her phone still wasn’t charging or turning on and, glancing at her wristwatch, she saw that it was dead.

  The radio played nothing but dead static.

  Something weird was going on.

  Then, suddenly, the words of the radio announcer came rushing back to her. They’d been buried somewhere in her memory.

  Hadn’t the radio person been saying something about an attack? Something about some kind of imminent attack against the United States?

  Could this have something to do with it?

  It seemed far-fetched.

  But, then again, no country was immune from attack. Stranger things had happened.

  Well, she couldn’t do anything now except try to get her dad to the hospital.

  The night was, if possible, only getting darker as she sped down long, twisting, tree-lined roads with her dad at her side, his breathing seeming to get slower and slower as the minutes ticked past.

  She was out of the traffic now. Alone on the road. The steering wheel was partially destroyed, torn and sliced fabric of the airbag hanging partially away from it. But it still worked.

  The foamy material from the inside of the airbag was all over, crunching and squishing underneath her feet as she jammed the accelerator to the floor.

  The engine revved high and roared in the freezing, silent night.

  She took the turns she knew by heart, the turns and roads that she’d known since early childhood, before she could even drive. For out-of-towners, these roads were off limits. Even with a GPS or a phone, they could be hard to navigate, for reasons that only the locals seemed to fully understand.

  For one thing, GPS was known not to work well in these parts. Something to do with where the satellites were and the curvature of the earth. Or something like that. Her dad had told her the theories, but she couldn’t remember them. Not that they meant anything now.

  It took twenty minutes
to arrive at the hospital. Twenty minutes of her headlights boring through nothing but darkness. Twenty minutes of not a light to be seen for miles.

  What about all the houses out here? Sure, there weren’t thousands. But there were some. Could their power all be out too?

  Something was going on.

  But it wasn’t until driving up the long hospital driveway that Meg realized just how serious things were.

  After all, she expected the hospital to be, if not lit up as always, at the very least lit up. If there was anywhere in the state that should have had power during a power outage, it was a hospital.

  And if any hospital should have had power, it was this one. It was known for miles around to be the best hospital in the state outside of Boston.

  And that was saying something for a state that prided itself so much on medical care.

  Shouldn’t there have been backup generators? Shouldn’t there have been something? Shouldn’t there have been some sign of life? Some light?

  But there was nothing. She couldn’t even see the immense hospital buildings that were organized in clusters, connected by long causeway halls that went from one unit to the next. Against a sky full of dense, dark clouds, she couldn’t see even the outline of a single building as her truck climbed up the long, winding driveway.

  It wasn’t until she was practically right up against the building, passing the various EMERGENCY signs and other signs, that she began to see the building’s shape. And, finally, her own headlights splashed against an outdoor wall.

  Meg pulled right into the circle and as she drove around it, her headlights lit up a scene of complete pandemonium.

  There were ambulances scattered around. But none of their lights were on.

  There were other cars. Sedans. A couple SUVs. One pickup. They were parked haphazardly and one of the SUVs was completely blocking the circle.

  Various vehicle doors were open and in the cold and the dark, people rushed around. Mostly, only their shadows were visible, but occasionally she caught a glimpse of a face.

  “This doesn’t look good, dad,” she muttered to her still-unconscious father. She only had his breathing to accompany her, and the sound of her truck’s engine.

  Meg stopped the truck, putting it in neutral, keeping the engine running.

  She got the door open, jumped down out of the cab.

  The air had a serious bite to it. Even worse than before.

  She looked around, expecting and hoping someone would rush over. Some hospital employee.

  She’d expected to arrive, to briefly explain the situation, and to have professionals rush in and take over. She’d expected to perhaps be given a blanket, or at the very least, be told that everything was going to be okay and that her father would be looked after.

  But instead, nothing happened.

  No one came over.

  Everyone ignored her.

  She’d have to take matters into her own hands. She didn’t care if they were overwhelmed. She didn’t care what was happening with the power or even the country. She just needed to get her dad help.

  “Hey!” she yelled out, stepping into the chaos.

  People ducked here and there, swerving around her.

  It was mostly darkness. Only her own truck’s headlights gave some illumination.

  Everything looked eerie. The humidity must have been high, although there wasn’t any snow, because the air that the headlights caught had that sparkle of moisture to it. The humidity, at these temperatures, only served to further draw the warmth from one’s bones.

  “Hey! I’ve got a sick man here! My dad needs help! Someone!”

  She shouted. She stomped her foot against the pavement.

  Nothing. No response.

  Fighting her way through the crowd, she tried to make it to the hospital doors. Dark as they were, something had to be going on inside. There had to be someone who could help her.

  On her way there, she tried grabbing people. Actually reaching out and seizing people with her fists, hoping that one of them would be some type of medical professional.

  But none were. They were people like her. People who were either sick themselves, or people with sick relatives.

  Some people were just trying to get in to see sick relatives, who apparently were stuck in the hospital. Others were taking sick relatives away from the hospital. But there was so much chaos, no one was making much progress.

  Everyone twisted like animals out of her grip, not even giving her an explanation.

  It was weird. It all felt crazy. Driving up, she’d seen none of this chaos. She’d driven dozens of miles in silence with nothing happening. And now that she was here, it was like a beehive of insanity, only without any of the organizational capacity that the insects had.

  But Meg didn’t care. Meg didn’t care about the others and their problems. She didn’t care if everyone was overworked. She just didn’t care. Not right now at least.

  Her mind was focused only on her dad. Getting him help.

  What would she do without him?

  She’d be lost.

  Somehow she elbowed and fought her way up to the hospital doors.

  There, beyond them, in the briefest and dimmest flash of light, she thought she caught sight of a nurse’s uniform.

  “You!”

  She reached out, past someone, and grabbed the uniform.

  “Hey! Get your hands off me!”

  It was a woman’s voice. The woman tried to twist away, wrenching herself out of Meg’s grip.

  But Meg wasn’t having it. She thought of her dad. She found strength somehow. She held on. No matter what.

  She pulled, tugging hard.

  “Get off me!”

  “I need your help!”

  The woman wouldn’t stop twisting. She wouldn’t stop pulling. She even cried out for help. But no one helped her and Meg kept pulling.

  Meg finally yanked and the woman came scooting right over to her. Meg kept her hands on her in vise-like grips.

  “I need your help,” she whispered, her voice soft, as if they were sitting on a pleasant evening on a park bench. “My father’s in my car, unconscious. He’s been in a bad wreck. He has kidney failure. He’s supposed to be getting dialysis today. I need some help.”

  Meg pulled the woman so close to her that she could see her face in the dim light.

  The poor nurse looked terrified. Meg was terrorizing her.

  But it was for a good reason. For a good cause.

  The woman’s face was frozen in fear.

  Finally, she spoke.

  “We’re very busy,” she said, in a hushed voice.

  “I don’t care!” snarled Meg. “My dad needs your help. You’ve got to do something.”

  “You’ve got to let me go.”

  “I’m not going to hurt you,” hissed Meg. “No need to be afraid of me.” But everything in her voice said differently. “I’m not letting you go until I know my dad gets help. If I let you go, this place is chaos, no one’s going to help us.”

  “I’ll help you. You’ve got to let me go.”

  “What do you need?”

  “Supplies ... medical supplies.”

  Meg didn’t trust her. She didn’t want this one person who could help somehow slipping away into the darkness of the hospital, into the chaos, into the multitudes.

  “I’m not letting you go,” hissed Meg, her voice sounding scary—even to herself—in its intensity and its conviction. “Take me with you.”

  The nurse nodded, short little nervous nods, and led Meg, who clutched her doggedly with one hand, toward the nurse’s station.

  “He’s supposed to be on dialysis?”

  Meg nodded.

  “What happened? Why’s he unconscious? How long has he been unconscious?” The nurse started leaving her fear behind somehow, getting into her professional mode, peppering Meg with questions that Meg didn’t know the answer to.

  “He was in a car crash. I don’t know. I don’t know!”
She felt terrible. She didn’t know the exact nature of her dad’s illness. But, hell, she wasn’t a nurse. She had no medical training. She had worked as a waitress back in Santa Fe while trying to figure out what to do next. She’d thought she was being a good daughter by taking her dad to appointments. She’d thought she was being a good daughter by moving back home.

  But now she knew that she was going to fail him, fail her father.

  Shit. She was losing control.

  She had to get it back together.

  She made a conscious effort to grit her teeth. She pushed and pushed, clenching them like she’d never clenched anything. It was a way for her to get it together. A way for her to maintain some kind of control.

  She was doing the best she could. Beating herself up didn’t help her dad. Getting the nurse to him did.

  The nurse was still gathering supplies, muttering things half to herself, and Meg was still clenching her with a superhuman grip. “Got to do this one quick.... two more births on B-wing coming soon.... one C-section.... one car crash.... broken ribs.”

  Meg realized the nurse was summarizing what she was tasked with doing.

  The computers, which were spread all over the room, lit up by the occasional stray flashlight beam, were all dead. The monitors were black and silent. No lights or charts flashed on them. Normally, the nurses got their cues and work orders from the computers. Software allowed the hospital to run as efficiently as an ant colony. Without the computers, the hospital was in chaos. The nurses were scattered, running all over, having to figure out their own work orders, having to figure out who to attend to and what supplies they needed.

  “Come on!”

  Enough was enough. Meg tugged on the nurse, practically dragging her away, ignoring her protests.

  This wasn’t quite like Meg. But she supposed that for her dad, she’d do anything.

  She hadn’t been there when her mom had been sick. And she’d never get over that guilt. And now she couldn’t lose her father. She had no siblings. Practically no one else left.

  Meg pulled the nurse hard, forcing her to run after her, getting her through the crowd and back out to her truck.

  “There he is! Do something!”

  The nurse was tentative at first, apparently eyeing the damage to Meg’s Toyota Tacoma pickup. But, soon enough, she was working away diligently, snapping into action the way only nurses can do when they encounter someone who needs attention.