Darkness After Series (Prequel): Enter the Darkness

by Scott B. Williams

  “So now what?” David asked, as he and his father stopped at April’s car to get the phone charger out before heading to the house.

  “I think you’re wasting your time with that. Any of these cars probably have enough juice left in the battery to power that charger, but after what we’ve seen, I don’t think a charge is going to help that cell phone. Whatever did this fried your phone along with everything else.”

  “I can try it at least. What else am I going to do? I’ve got to call April or she’s going to start freaking out, worrying about Kimberly.”

  “I’m sure, but I don’t know how you’re going to call her, son. At least the car stopped while you were close to the house. It could have happened when you were on the highway in the middle of nowhere with my granddaughter, so we should be glad of that. I’m sure we’ll find out something soon from the city officials or the police to advise us as to what’s going on. You’ll just have to sit tight and be patient until then. April will be okay, worried or not.”

  “Maybe, but she may not ever want to see me again, either.”

  “I can’t help you with that, son. The two of you need to work out your differences though. You’ve got a daughter to think about, you know. It’s not like you two are just dating. Your mom and I were hoping the two of you would be married by now.”

  David didn’t reply. His dad didn’t really know the full extent of it and there was no use trying to explain. David never planned to be a father at such a young age, if ever. But when Kimberly came along, he was a proud daddy, despite the problems he and April had from time to time. He thought he was doing the best he could, but money was tight and everything but his paycheck was going up. April was taking night classes and working too, and David had to spend most of his free time after work taking care of Kimberly while she was gone. Most of the time he didn’t mind it, but it seemed he never got to have fun any more. That’s why he’d taken advantage of the evening before to get drunk with Josh. It was the first time in a while, but then this had to happen today and it was bound to cause him a world of grief when he and Kimberly finally did make it home. He stopped in the carport to plug the dead iPhone into the cigarette lighter outlet of his dad’s car, whether it would do any good or not. The little red LED indicator on the car charger came on, so at least that was working, but the phone did nothing. He left it where it was on the seat and went inside.

  Six

  “I’VE GOT TO START heading home,” Mitch told Mr. Greenfield as they stood there talking where they’d first met beside their stalled vehicles. “My thirteen-year-old sister is going to need me. She’s not going to know what to do. I’m sure school will be dismissed today, but I was supposed to pick her up after classes.”

  Mitch explained that Lisa had stayed overnight with her best friend, who lived with her mom and older brother near the school they all attended. At this hour she should be in her first class, but if the power was off there too as Mitch was sure it was, she wouldn’t be able to stay at the school. With him gone and no way for her to call their mom and dad, Lisa wouldn’t know what to do. Her only reasonable option was to go back home with Stacy and Jason until Mitch could get there.

  “She spent the night there because I had to leave so early to get Mom and Dad to the airport on time. They were flying to Denver for a funeral tomorrow. It was my mom’s best friend and college roommate that died. They were supposed to be back on Friday. Lisa and I were going to stay at the house after I got home today and we would have been fine, but this changes everything now.”

  “How are you going to get back? From what you said, your family’s place is a long way from here. It took you two hours to drive to the airport from there?”

  “Almost. We allowed a little extra, but yeah, it’s a little over a hundred miles. To answer your question though, I’ll walk. What else can I do?” Mitch asked as he unlocked his truck and began rummaging around behind the seats for something.

  “Walk? More than hundred miles! Do you know how long that’ll take you? It would take me a week to walk a hundred miles!”

  “I don’t mind walking Mr. Greenfield. It sounds like a long way, but it won’t take that long. If what we’re guessing about that solar flare is true, they aren’t going to get the power back on today, or tomorrow, or this week, or the next. Who knows when they will? I’m a fast walker and I’m in good shape, so I won’t need to stop much. I reckon it won’t take me more than about three long days to get there… maybe part of a forth.”

  “But what are you going to do when it gets dark? What are you going to do about food and water? You know, you could come over to my house if you want to wait and see what happens. Deborah, my wife, won’t mind. We’ve got a generator, and other emergency stuff we keep in storage for hurricane season. Things shouldn’t be too bad for a few days anyway. Maybe by then this will get resolved.”

  “I appreciate it, but I can’t just sit here and wait. I’d feel cooped up anyway surrounded by all this concrete. No offense if it’s your thing, Mr. Greenfield, but I can’t stand being in a city even for a little while, and like I said, my little sister’s gonna need me. The sooner I get started, the sooner I’ll get there.”

  Mitch was sorting through his things in the truck as he talked and making a small pile on the passenger’s seat of what he would take with him. When he was done, his school backpack was bulging at the seams; stuffed with his camouflage hunting clothing he’d planned to change into on the way home. He slung the backpack over his shoulder and unfastened his belt to put on a big hunting knife he took out of the truck next. Mitch then reached behind the seat one more time and pulled out a longbow and a leather quiver full of arrows.

  “Good heavens, Mitch! What are you going to do with all that stuff?”

  “Well, I’m not about to leave it here in my truck for somebody to break in and steal. This is my favorite hunting bow, and there’s just about nothing I would take for it. And there’s nothing I’d rather do than hunt, Mr. Greenfield. You asked what I would do about food. I figure it might come in handy for that along the way. I just wish I hadn’t left my .357 Magnum at home like an idiot. If I were closer to home, it would be under the seat where it stays when I drive anywhere. But coming down here, crossing the state line into Louisiana and all, Dad said I’d better leave it at home since I’m not old enough to get my concealed carry permit. He said there was no telling what some of these New Orleans city cops would do if they caught an underage Mississippi boy carrying a firearm without a permit. And I won’t be able to get one until I’m 21.”

  “Well, aren’t you worried about the police seeing you walking down the street with a bow and arrows? They look like weapons to me.”

  “And they are too, you can be sure of that, Mr. Greenfield. But I won’t be waving it around and I’ll keep it unstrung for now, so they’ll probably just think my bow is a walking stick from a distance. I figure the cops will have more to worry about than one kid taking a walk out of town along the highway. Anyway, I’d rather risk losing it to confiscation than to leave it here and know it will be gone before I ever get back to get the truck.”

  “I don’t know, Mitch. I hate that you’ve apparently got a bad impression of the city. The people here are some of the friendliest I’ve ever been around. Sure, there’s crime, but I think the police will keep things under control until this situation gets resolved.”

  “Well, you said you weren’t here right after Katrina hit, but we were close enough to New Orleans and the coast even up there in the country to see the bad side of it. And all we heard from down here was how bad things were out of hand with the looting and shooting and that it stayed that way for a long time. It took the National Guard and regular soldiers too to stop all that craziness. How do you figure this is going to be any different? People start freaking out just because the lights are out, and now they can’t get around either because their cars aren’t running. What’s going to happen when the stores all run out of food? I don’t know about you, but I don�
��t want to find out. You ought to consider getting out yourself, Mr. Greenfield. You and your wife are both welcome to come with me if you can walk that far. We’ve got plenty of room up there at the farm. One thing about it, lights or no lights, we won’t be going hungry. We’ve got 600 acres of prime river bottom woods. There’s so many deer you can’t walk a hundred yards without seeing one, and besides that, Dad has cattle on the farm too.”

  “That sounds like quite the place, Mitch, but Deb would never agree to leave our home to go someplace remote like that. And even if she would agree, we would just slow you down. I can’t imagine walking that far really; I’m not looking forward to walking just the four or five miles back to the house, but I guess there’s no use hanging around here any longer. Look, why don’t you at least walk back there with me before you leave? It’s not really out of your way, because I can tell you a shortcut to get back to the expressway from the house. We’ll load you up with some snack foods and bottled water for your trip, and you can fill up on a hot meal before you set out. What do you say?”

  Mitch thought about it for a moment and decided that would probably be the smart thing to do. He didn’t have food or water, and he was facing a long trek just to get out of the concrete jungle that was New Orleans and the North Shore cities across the bridge. He had a long way to go before he could even begin to consider hunting along the way.

  “Okay. If you’re sure you can spare it, I could use a bit of food and water to get started.”

  “Of course we can. Deb will be glad to fix you up. If I were you, I’d get some rest first too. It’s going to get really hot today. You can nap at our house and leave late in the afternoon or early evening if you like. I think it may be smarter walking out of the city at night. You’ll have less chance of being seen or hassled that way.”

  Mitch figured Mr. Greenfield was probably right about that too. As much as he hated to delay getting started, he knew he could make it up by walking all night. Mitch liked walking at night anyway and did it frequently on the farm, sometimes even wandering the national forest lands beyond their property in the dark. He would go with Mr. Greenfield, and then when he left, he was sure he would be able to make it to the North Shore before stopping again.

  “I was going to play hooky today,” Mitch explained after they set out for Mr. Greenfield’s house and the older man asked him why he had the bow and arrows and the hunting clothes in the truck to begin with. “Dad was okay with it, since I was missing my morning classes anyway. I was going to do a little wild hog hunting.”

  “Really? Is it hunting season now? I thought that was over this time of year.”

  “It’s always hog season back home. Those things aren’t native here and they tear up the land and cause all kinds of problems. Besides, my dad’s the game warden and if he says it okay, then I don’t have to worry about it.”

  “Game warden, huh? That sounds like an interesting job. I’ll bet it’s dangerous too though, isn’t it?”

  “It can be. Dad has his share of run-ins with outlaws and poachers. His department sometimes gets involved in drug cases too, especially when its smugglers or growers operating out in the boonies. But he’s good at what he does. Most people around there have heard about his reputation and know better than to push their luck in Stone County.”

  “Well, I sure hope he and your mom are safe in Houston. It sounds like he’s the kind of man that’ll be needed back there around home if this situation lasts as long as I’m afraid it might.”

  “If that plane landed he’ll make it home. I have no doubt of that. If anybody could do it, my dad could, and he’ll take care of my mom too. But it’s long way from Houston without a ride, so I won’t be looking for him anytime soon.”

  Seven

  APRIL WAS GROWING MORE anxious by the minute as she began to think that David not getting back on time with Kimberly was somehow connected to the weirdness going on in the city. If she could just find someone with a working phone, she would call him, or if she couldn’t reach him, she’d call his parents. Getting to work had suddenly lost its urgency in light of a situation that could be a lot more serious than she’d assumed. Her walk around just one block of the neighborhood was enough to confirm her fears. No one she talked to had a working cell phone, and those who’d tried to start their cars discovered they had the same problem as Jennifer. The only exception was a man who had an old diesel-powered Volvo from the early 80’s.

  “Yes, it still runs just fine,” he told her, when she joined the small group of people from the neighborhood who’d walked over to his driveway when they saw that he had a running car. “I don’t think it’s because of the diesel. I think it’s just because it doesn’t have the computer the newer cars all have. Whatever caused this power outage had to be some kind of atmospheric electrical surge. Nothing else could explain the damaged cell phones and other devices. It must have been widespread enough to take out the telephone company’s equipment as well, since the landlines are down too.”

  “I’ve never heard of anything like that,” April said.

  “I don’t know that it’s ever happened before, but I think it might have been an electromagnetic pulse; sometimes called an ‘EMP’.”

  “What could cause it though? There wasn’t a storm or anything,” another man asked.

  “Not one that we could see, anyway. They say solar activity can cause it. Or a nuclear weapon detonated in high above the ground, in the atmosphere. But I doubt it was deliberate. It’s not something the terrorists could pull off and the countries that are capable probably wouldn’t risk the retaliation they know would follow.”

  “So what can we do,” the same man asked. “How long will it take them to get everything back online?”

  “It’s not a matter of just getting the city back online. If it was powerful enough to fry even the electronic modules in vehicles, it must have been powerful enough to devastate a vast area. If so, the grid will be down across the whole region, and maybe even the whole country. There won’t be enough parts and components to replace a fraction of what’s been damaged. It will all have to be rebuilt from scratch. And that’s just the power grid. The same thing applies to all communication systems and transportation networks. I doubt any aircraft are flying, especially not commercial. If what I think happened is really true, it’s going to be a nightmare beyond anything we’ve ever seen. It’ll be a catastrophic event.”

  April felt a wave of panic sweep over her as she heard this man’s theories. If what he said was true, then how was David supposed to get here at all? What if he hadn’t actually overslept? What if he was already on the way and driving when this electromagnetic pulse thing or whatever it was hit? If so, her little Kimberly could be out there on the road somewhere, stranded with David, who would have no way of getting her home. She tried to push that image out of her mind. Surely it wasn’t as bad as this man said. Surely the grid couldn’t be down as far away as Hattiesburg. For once, she hoped that the worst she’d assumed about David was true; that he’d gone out partying with friends the night before and simply overslept this morning. Because if that were the case and things really were the same there in Hattiesburg as they were here in New Orleans, at least Kimberly would be safe at her grandparent’s house. They would look after her until she could find a way to get there, and she would if David didn’t show up with her soon.

  She walked back to her apartment, stopping to tell Jennifer across the street what she’d heard and then Mrs. Landry next door before going back inside. She had to calm herself down but she still wanted her morning coffee too, although she knew the caffeine probably wouldn’t help her nerves. It didn’t matter anyway, because she had no way to make any. Even the stove in the apartment was electric. She settled instead for one of the Cokes David kept in the fridge, even though she hated soft drinks and would never drink one under normal circumstances.

  Opening the door to get it out, she realized the refrigerator wasn’t going to stay cold for long, and everything in it w
ould be ruined soon. There was enough food in there to last a few days though, and there were some nonperishable canned and packaged goods in the cabinets. That was a good thing, since she had no way to get to a store, but food wasn’t really on her mind just yet anyway. Opening the Coke, she walked out the side door to the attached carport on their side of the duplex and looked at David’s old Mustang. The man with the Volvo had said that older vehicles wouldn’t have been affected by the electrical surge. He said they didn’t have the computer box thingys or whatever they were under the hood and that they should start and run just the same as always.

  This got her thinking, because David’s Mustang was a 1969 model—much older than that Volvo she’d just seen running. The problem though, was that David’s car was an unreliable piece of junk. At least that was her impression of it. She couldn’t count the times he’d called her from somewhere in the city to come pick him up because it had broken down and left him stranded. He spent way more of his meager paycheck on it than she thought was reasonable, especially for a man with a daughter. April and David had fought about that car numerous times, and had almost broken up because of it. The latest incident resulted in him paying to have it towed home, where he’d pushed it under the side carport and it had been sitting for weeks. April had been giving him rides when she could and occasionally letting him use her car when she was feeling especially benevolent towards him.

  One of his friends with more mechanical knowledge than he had told David he needed to rebuild the carburetor, and he’d bought the parts to do it and removed it, but hadn’t started taking it apart yet. April looked at the tools scattered on an old table next to the car and reached in the open window and took out the box that contained the rebuild kit. She didn’t know much about working on cars, but she’d helped her dad change the oil in his and she had at least a passing familiarity with basic hand tools, such as wrenches and screwdrivers. Opening the box of parts, she saw that there was an exploded diagram sheet that showed where all the bits and pieces went, and she began to think that if David could figure it out, she probably could too. But that was a last resort that could wait a bit for now, because she still held out hope that he would somehow get there with Kimberly.