Luke looked about the kitchen with a hand on his hip, biting his lip.
‘Jeez… Two minutes in here and we’re already talking about suicide. Are you all right?’
‘What do you mean?’
‘With your dad.’
‘Yeah. Once this business with the solar flare is over I’ll call him. He’ll calm down.’
I changed the channel to a laugh-track sitcom, sitting back and exhaling deeply.
As with most other things that existed outside of the tiny, self-contained world we lived in, I let my mind wander and tried to abandon the thought of my father, albeit unsuccessfully.
In earnest, that’s the way all people live. Nobody gives a shit about what’s happening in the rest of the world, as long as they’re still safe – until, of course, that nightmare ends up on your front door. That’s the time when everybody starts complaining about the absence of comfort. Experience something for a few months and you start to take it for granted, and then you wonder how you ever lived without it. When it gets taken away? That’s when people start to act like they’re entitled to it, because they forgot what it was like to exist before their privilege, before everything that makes modern life oh-so-easy.
I always tried to remember not to take things for granted, but as the days went by and I continued to plan my future with Helen in my mind, I continually found myself falling into the complacency of modern living. Hence ignoring my father – whilst his thinking had affected me and trained me to do things that a lot of people couldn’t, that had long begun to rust and I couldn’t deny that we had drifted.
‘Hungry?’ Luke suddenly said. I felt as if I had been shaken out of sleepwalking, and I turned my head rapidly to look over at him.
‘Definitely,’ I replied, taking a bowl from him and hurriedly taking a bite. Despite how hot it was, it tasted great. ‘Delicious, buddy.’
‘There’s plenty more if you want seconds,’ he said, seating himself down on the other couch and putting his feet up on the table. ‘I don’t think anybody’s ever said that before in the history of the world.’
‘Never said what?’
‘ ‘I didn’t make enough pasta.’ Who doesn’t make enough pasta? Not in this world of abundance.’
‘Yeah,’ I said, smiling lightly before it faded and I took another long breath. ‘World of abundance.’
***
‘I hate you so fucking much right now.’
‘Don’t hate the player, hate the game.’
A crate of beer and five hours of videogames later and it was 10pm. In this heat we were both functionless, me especially considering how much I was getting my ass kicked by Luke.
‘I’m done,’ I laughed, ‘I’m going to bed.’
‘Aw, come on, just one more game.’
‘No, screw that. I’m exhausted. Night, buddy. Leave the windows open when you head to bed.’
‘Will do.’
I patted him on the shoulder and pushed myself up from the couch, making my way across the living room to my bedroom. I was only a little drunk but the heat only added to my disorientation as I stumbled through the door and shut it behind me. I pulled my clothes off and fell into bed in the darkness of the room.
I leant out of bed, fumbling about for my pants before finding them and reaching into the pocket, retrieving my phone.
9:32pm: Just got back in now honey – see you tomorrow! I love you xxx
I smiled, texting her back as coherently as I could before dropping the phone on my nightstand. I looked over at the top of the cabinet for a moment, gazing at the green LED lights of my alarm clock as it flicked from 10:04 to 10:05.
I turned my head to look back up at the darkened ceiling, save for the vague strips of blue light flooding in through the blinds from some untraceable source outside. No matter where you were in this modern world, the glow of something was always breaking its way into my eye line.
At least that was what I thought.
Chapter Three
Things Go Dark
‘She’s beautiful.’
‘Yeah.’
From behind thick shrubbery we watched silently. We were both captivated, but in the midst of our quiet moment I turned to look at my father. His expression was focused, almost in love, but analytical and wary.
‘She’s feeding. When we get her she won’t even know that it’s happened. What a great way to go out, huh?’
I didn’t say anything; I only turned to look back out at the clearing thirty yards off, where the deer resided.
‘Remember. Just like I showed you.’
I raise the gun slowly, peering along the sight. My father’s careful, watchful form moves closer to examine my aim.
I close one eye, peering through the sight. The deer emerges into focus through the crosshairs.
‘There. Whenever you’re ready, son.’
My finger steadied on the trigger.
In increments, I increase the pressure against it.
I awoke in the dead of night with a dry mouth, my tongue feeling as if it was stuck to the roof. I tried to conjure up some saliva, but it was pointless – I needed a glass of water.
How did I know it was night? True, it was dark, so that was a given, but what I didn’t know was the time – my clock had stopped working. The room was completely dark – no strips of light spilling in from outside, no car engines roaring or ticking over, although I did catch an increased number of voices and shouting from the street below.
At that moment, of course, it didn’t register as all that important in my mind – my head was still a little groggy and all that I could think about was getting a glass of water.
I reached down to the plug socket and the switch on the wall by my bed and flicked it off, then on again. Nothing. In the darkness I frowned, reaching for my phone and pressing the unlock button. Again, nothing happened. For a moment I considered that it might have been out of battery, but not even the empty sign appeared on the screen.
‘What the fuck…?’ I muttered to myself, sitting up onto the edge of my bed and trying it again. I don’t know how many times I pressed the button, but it still wasn’t working.
Keeping it clutched in my hand I got out of bed, pulled a t-shirt on and headed for the door, slowly turning the handle and heading out into the open section of the apartment. Usually I was used to seeing the glow of the city outside – we were six floors up and a little way out from downtown, so it would have been a given.
I had never experienced such a profound darkness in my entire life. There was nothing.
‘Sam?’
There are times in life when you physically jump at a loud noise or an unexpected hand being placed upon your shoulder – for me, it was my name being called through the dark without realising at first that it was Luke who had said it.
I slammed back against my bedroom door, only just managing to prevent myself from toppling over.
‘Jesus fucking Christ, Luke,’ I gasped, breathing deeply, ‘you almost gave me a heart attack!’
‘Have you seen this?’
He said it in a perambulatory way, as if the words I had said hadn’t even occurred to him at all. I could tell, in that instant, that something was wrong.
‘Seen what…?’
‘Come over here by the window.’
He was whispering. As my eyes adjusted I could see the vague, silhouetted outline of him on the other side of the room. The blinds were opened, and only that odd, barely blue light that drifts in from the echoes of the sun as it sat facing the other side of the planet provided us with any light.
I crossed the room, being careful not to knock into anything as I went, before finally arriving at Luke’s side. I looked out over the city below us, down at the street that our apartment block stood on and the road that ran right alongside it.
Everything was dark. There were no streetlights illuminating the sidewalks, no car headlights brightening up the tarmac and the edges of the buildings. In the vague blue glow of the sky we
could see the outlines of a myriad of unmoving cars and people – they were everywhere; stood atop the rooves of their vehicles, in groups on the sidewalk, scattered about haphazardly on steps and fire escapes.
‘What the fuck is going on?’ I said, looking about at the oddity of a view before me. ‘Is this a power outage…?’ I asked the question, even though I knew that that wasn’t the answer. It was just the first stupid thing my mind came to.
‘Everything’s turned off,’ Luke said. ‘Everything. It’s just not just the mains and the city’s electrical circuits, I mean everything. The cars have stopped, too. My phone won’t even turn on.’
‘Mine neither,’ I said, holding its darkened shape out in front of us. We both spoke in frantic whispers.
‘Are we under attack?’ Luke asked quietly from my side.
‘This doesn’t make any sense,’ I muttered. ‘The mains, I get it, but the cars? They’re independent of everything around them. How do they just stop moving?’
Even though we were stood in the relative safety of the apartment – of which I knew the door was locked and bolted – the rising frequency and volume of the sounds outside begin to feel more and more imposing upon us as we looked down over the scene below.
Suddenly my thoughts raced to Helen – she had made it home, that much I knew.
‘Have you checked the landlines?’ I asked hurriedly.
‘Yep. And my laptop. They’re both dead.’
‘I don’t understand… What the fuck is happening? How long hast it been like this?’
‘A few minutes, maybe? I was reading in bed and the light went off. Everything just stopped.’
We stood there in quiet for some time, watching. A few people had begun to shout, but even their words were lost in the infallible mess of everything that was being said.
Suddenly, out in the distance, from the top floor apartment of a taller building six or seven blocks away, a huge explosion bellowed out. The sound of it was matched only by the sourceless screams that seemed to echo about us, the fiery cloud bursting out and letting off a huge plume of smoke.
‘Holy shit…’ Luke muttered, his voice a low squeak. I managed to draw my eyes away from the sight of it just in time to turn and see his terrified face as he gazed out towards the explosion. His eyes were wide open with terror.
So were mine.
‘Seriously, are we under attack?’ Luke said.
I gazed towards the apartment, feeling the pangs of dread welling up inside of me.
Outside, the screams continued… But suddenly they were drowned out by something else. It seemed to be nothing at first, but as it grew and grew amongst the depths of my senses I started to pay it more attention.
‘Wait, do you hear that?’ I asked.
‘Hear what?’
It was a low rumble, as if something huge was next door, hidden in a soundproofed room, only the remnants and echoes of its huge power making their way through.
‘Wait, what is that?’ Luke said.
I looked about myself, feeling an odd shaking sensation that almost didn’t seem to be there at all, despite the fact that I couldn’t ignore its presence.
The notion of an earthquake crossed my mind, and after that there was the tiniest notion in my mind of the Rapture – no electricity, no power, and a shaking feeling. I based my beliefs on the things that I saw around me, and prior to those few moments I had never believed such a thing possible – there was no evidence for it.
I have to admit, though, that right then, there were a few brief seconds where I was starting to believe that we were experiencing some kind of theological end time, and the four horsemen were about to come descending from the sky.
But that wasn’t it, either.
Suddenly, the rumbling reached a peak, the screams of the city ascended impossibly, and that horrendous, flaming source of the rumbling came into view.
It was like a scene from a movie, but we were caught right in the midst of it.
It was a passenger plane.
The huge structure of the craft appeared faster than I even thought possible. It must have been flying a hundred yards above the roof of our building, but from my perception it felt as if it had skimmed the top of my head.
I swear, I felt the breeze from the engines through the glass of the windows and the concrete wall.
One of the engines was engulfed completely in fire, the other firing wisps of it out of the turbines in huge blooms. There was a fluttering in my chest, a literal rising panic that felt as if somebody was pushing against my torso from the front and back, compressing my chest.
I wanted to scream, but I couldn’t make a sound.
The resounding crash of the plane into the buildings off to our left, perhaps twenty blocks away, sent a shockwave out that cracked the windowpane before us.
If the explosion from before had been terrifying, this one sent a fear through me that was beyond anything I could reason with, beyond any semblance of sense. There was something primal about it, as if some part of my brain was igniting that had never been used before.
‘What the fuck is going on?!’ Luke screamed, running his hands into his hair as the flames roared into the sky. ‘Holy shit…’
My eye twitched as I gazed out at the warzone. I could see the plumes of smoke and dust and concrete flying into the air, clouding that horrific, burning scene from sight.
Down in the street below there was sheer panic and terror as people began running in both directions, desperate to get away from the violence that had swept up around them.
Far off, out of sight, there was the sound of another blast, akin to that of the penthouse apartment that we had seen go up in flames.
‘What the fuck do we do, Sam?’
I tried to clear my mind, deciding on the best course of action in this situation. My eyes flitted in the opposite direction of where the plane had come down, towards where Helen’s apartment would be. She was fifteen blocks away, and I had no way to contact her to check if she was okay amidst this encroaching madness.
‘We need some light in here,’ I said, taking a deep breath to calm myself, despite the fact that it escaped me in a shuddering quiver.
‘What?’
‘I can’t see a damned thing in here, Luke. We need some light.’
‘How are we gonna do that?’
Through the chaos of my thoughts I sought for some solution – we had plenty of matches, but that wouldn’t do a thing except burn us. I briefly considered setting something alight in a metal container, but there were so many ways that that could go wrong…
Thinking back to Helen, the answer came to me.
I set off quickly towards my room, fumbling about in the dark for the door.
‘Where are you going?’
‘Get the matches from the kitchen!’
‘Why?’
‘Just get them!’
I slammed through the open door, pulling the doors of my wardrobe open and sinking to the floor as I fumbled around amongst boxes and shoes. Finally I found the box in particular that I was looking for.
Here I couldn’t see it, but I knew what the note written on the box said.
A little present for your apartment, because it fucking stinks.
Helen xxx
I snatched it up, heading back into the living room as I ripped the box open and set it down on the table, just as Luke’s silhouette came bounding toward me.
‘Here… What are those?’
Chapter Four
By Candlelight
A few minutes later we were pacing frantically about in the living room by the light of several floral candles that were scattered about. Helen had bought them for me as a kind of joke a few months ago, I just hadn’t gotten around to using them yet.
Now they were saving our lives, or perhaps making them a lot easier.
I headed back over to the window, looking out at the glow of the flames against the rooftops in the distance, the smoke rising up and out of sight.
&n
bsp; The screams were all around us now, louder than ever, and people had begun to shout not with fear, but with anger.
That primal side to me that had sparked up when the plane had come down? I think that that was starting to kick up in a lot more people and not just myself.
‘What do we know about this?’ Luke asked. ‘Is this a terrorist cell or something?’
‘That can’t be it,’ I said, remaining by the window and looking out every so often. I had had a desperate urge to get out of the building ever since the plane had come down – in my mind none of it felt real, or at the most a perfunctory illusion that had appeared before my eyes. I felt dazed more than anything, the intoxicating smell of those freaking candles filling the room, their scent doing little to calm me other than to remind me of Helen.
Even she was a source of stress for me right now, because I had no idea whether she was all right or not.
‘The solar flare,’ I said, running a hand over my face and through my hair. ‘For all of that stuff that my Dad was calling me about I ignored him…’
Luke didn’t say a word. He simply glared over at me with the most ghostly, terrified expression I had ever seen befall him.
‘Are you serious? Like what we were talking about last night?’
‘Yeah. It could wipe out every piece of electrical equipment that it comes into contact with.’
We both fell silent, staring across the room at each other.
‘That’s what this is, isn’t it?’ He said, saying it as a statement of surety rather than a question. ‘Holy fuck… Everything. We need it for everything, Sam, and it’s just been fucking turned off. Do you have any idea what the repercussions of this could be?’
‘You mean what they already are? Everything’s gone dark… Jesus, what if this has hit the entire planet, Luke?’
‘We don’t know that.’
‘But it’s likely, isn’t it?’
Again, in the flickering light of the candles in our locked apartment, we stared across at each other. The silence between the two of us spoke for itself.
Outside, the screams and shouts continued to echo.
The Solar Pulse (Book 1): Beyond The Pulse Page 2
