Dark Days (Book 1): Collapse

by Lukens, Mark

  “All of them!” Doug screamed at Regina.

  John shuffled up to them with his hands stuffed in his pockets. He had a long, basset-hound face that remained perfectly calm. He acted like they were discussing some movie he’d watched last night, determined not to allow anything like the mere collapse of society to bother him. He was the exact antithesis of Doug. “I heard that the banks had to shut down because of a system-wide virus. They’re saying they’ll be back up on Monday.”

  Yes, Ray thought. Good. Finally, a voice of reason. That’s what we all need right now.

  “Yeah,” Doug said as he turned towards John with a scowl. “That’s what they want you to think. They want everyone to stay calm while they shut everything down and escape to their bunkers.”

  “Has anyone called Craig yet?” Ray asked, trying to change the subject.

  “Of course, man,” Doug answered. “Can’t reach him. We’ve all tried.”

  The look of smug satisfaction on Doug’s face was beginning to bother Ray a little, so he turned his attention to Regina.

  Regina shrugged. “Just goes to voicemail when we call him.”

  “What about security?” Ray asked. “Darrell and Jim. Are they—?”

  “None of them are here,” Doug answered before Ray could finish his sentence with that I-told-ya-so smile still plastered on his face.

  Ray breathed in the cold air and let out a slow breath. This was all going too fast. He needed things to slow down. He ran the information he had in his mind, analyzing it, making calculations. Security wasn’t in the building. Craig, their supervisor, couldn’t be reached. Their keycards weren’t working. Ray hadn’t tried his keycard hanging around his neck yet, but he had to assume that if the keycards of forty-five employees who were already gathered here weren’t working then his wasn’t going to work, either.

  “You think we’re fired?” Peter, another employee, asked as he sauntered up to their little group. He had a lit cigarette in one hand and he held it down by his hip, cupped in his hand like he was trying to keep the smoke from drifting towards them. He turned away without waiting for an answer and inhaled a large drag like he really needed it.

  “They wouldn’t close this department down without telling us,” Regina said. “Would they? I mean, they would have to at least let us clear out our desks. And they . . . they would have to give us some kind of an explanation. Right?”

  “I don’t know,” Ray answered. He’d never considered the idea of being laid off, even though there had been record layoffs around the country in the last month, along with all of the businesses closing. But he figured that a government job would be safe. And even though he’d been contemplating the idea of quitting and moving his family to Cincinnati, the idea of being without a job wasn’t sitting too well with him. Suddenly, it was difficult for him to imagine being laid off. Since graduating college, he’d never been without a job. He could feel that wave of panic wanting to take over again.

  He needed to get control of the panic. Just because their keycards weren’t working this morning didn’t mean that the whole department had been shut down. It could be a computer glitch. John had said that the banks were shut down because of a computer virus; maybe a similar virus was infecting the security system of this building. It made sense. All of it could even be a cyberattack by hackers. It wasn’t out of the realm of possibility. There had been plenty of cyberattacks lately, both from hackers and from foreign governments.

  “I bet that’s it,” Peter said after blowing out some cigarette smoke behind him and away from their little group. “I bet the government is shutting down departments everywhere, trying to streamline since the economy’s going into the toilet.”

  “Let’s not panic yet,” Ray told them, and he even managed what he hoped was a reassuring smile. “We’ve all been through some tough economic times before back in 2008. It was bad at first, and then everything was okay again after a few years. We recovered pretty quickly, and I’m sure we will again.”

  God, I sound like Larry now.

  Doug barked out a laugh. “No, this time it’s different. The whole world’s economy is collapsing. The currencies are collapsing everywhere. Banks are closing because everyone’s trying to pull their cash out at the same time. Money is becoming worthless. Pretty soon it’s going to be five hundred dollars for a loaf of bread. The riots and protests are getting out of control. People are turning into animals. Police are shooting first and asking questions later. I’m telling you, martial law is going to be declared soon. Travel’s going to be restricted. Except for our government leaders and the corporate billionaires, of course, the ones who knew this shit storm was coming; they’ve probably already headed for their little underground bunkers or flew off to their island retreats that they’ve been stocking with supplies for years.”

  Ray glanced at the others. Doug was getting them paranoid.

  “I’m not sure about all that,” John said in his deep, calm voice. But then he looked at Ray for an affirmation, and there was the first flicker of fear in those big brown eyes.

  “You’re only getting the information that the mass media wants you to get,” Doug continued. “The media that’s controlled by the government and the big corporations.”

  Ray could imagine where Doug was getting his news and information; probably from some extremist, right-wing website preaching doom and gloom; or some conspiracy theorist nut who believed Big Brother had the time, the ability, and the desire to watch every move he made; or some YouTube channel videotaped in a paranoid prepper’s homemade bomb shelter.

  “Things seem to be heading downhill fast,” Peter said. “I mean, you have to admit that.” He dropped his cigarette down on the concrete walkway and ground it out with the heel of his shoe. He glanced back at the locked doors of the building. “I’m starting to get a little worried.”

  “Well, you should,” Doug snapped at Peter. “The banks fucked up again.” He looked at Regina, giving her a sheepish smile and a curt nod. “Sorry about the language. But the Fed and the big banks screwed up, and the government wants us to bail them out again, even though they keep making the same mistakes over and over again. That’s why everybody’s starting to riot. The banks keep pulling this shit and then the government has to bail them out with our tax money. And now they’re freezing our accounts, holding our money hostage.”

  “I’m sure it’s all going to get worked out,” Ray said.

  Regina, John, and Peter looked at Ray with hope in their eyes, waiting for a further explanation from him. But he didn’t have one. He didn’t have a counter for the things that Doug was saying.

  “I don’t have any cash on me,” Peter said, suddenly alarmed. “None at home either. If they freeze my account, close my bank, I won’t be able to get any money out.” His words hung in the chilly air.

  “I told you to keep some cash at home,” Doug scolded Peter, jabbing a finger at him. “I told you to have a plan for when this happened. I told you the shit was going to hit the fan soon.”

  “Okay,” Ray said. “Let’s all take a deep breath for a moment.” He needed to calm all of them down before things got out of hand. He was beginning to resent the smug satisfaction on Doug’s face and in his voice. It seemed like Doug was happy that this day had come, happy that he had been proven right no matter how much misery it was going to cause.

  “Our country is going to collapse,” Doug continued, working himself up more and more, his pale skin getting redder and redder. “Martial law is going to happen, and then we’re going to be vulnerable to terrorist attacks. I’d get out of D.C. while you can, while the military and police will still let you travel. This place is going to be one big bullseye target soon.”

  Ray looked at Doug, about to suggest that he tone down the end-of-the-world rhetoric until they had some more information.

  “I heard there’s a plague,” John said in his Debbie Downer voice, looking at each of them. “You guys hear that? All of those murders and the suicides, som
e are blaming it on some kind of . . . like disease or something.”

  “That’s true!” Doug shouted. “Absolutely true. I heard it’s some kind of rabies virus. I got a friend down in the Atlanta office, and he heard that it’s some kind of mutated virus that’s airborne now. Probably a bioweapon of some kind, I bet.”

  Ray was glad that the CDC offices where they worked didn’t handle any diseases, most of the work they did here was office work: statistics, surveys, accounting, payroll.

  A lot of the other employees were turning their way, some of them listening to Doug’s rising voice and then whispering to each other, some nodding their heads in agreement.

  “I never heard anything about a possible pandemic,” Ray said. He didn’t have any contacts down at the Atlanta headquarters as Doug claimed, and he wasn’t as up to speed on current events and the news as he probably should have been, but he was pretty sure he would have heard something about a pandemic virus before today.

  “Yeah,” Peter said, quick to agree. “Don’t you think the CDC would’ve informed us at least?”

  “No,” Doug said and snorted out a laugh. “They don’t want us to know about it anymore than they want anyone else in America to know about it. The only reason I know about it is because of my friend down in Atlanta.”

  Right now Ray was concerned that everyone was going to be whipped up into a frenzy, when the locked doors might still have a reasonable explanation. “Hold on, Doug. You’re starting to scare everyone.”

  “They should be scared. Everyone needs to wake up.”

  “There’s got to be a good reason the doors are still locked,” Ray said. “Maybe the electricity in the building is out.”

  “The lights are on inside the building,” John told him in his monotone voice. “I’ve already walked around the building twice. Peeked in some of the windows.”

  “Well, then, maybe it’s some kind of security problem. Maybe there’s a virus in the security system that shut everything down.”

  “Like the virus at the banks,” Regina said with hope.

  “A cyber virus,” Doug said. “That could be it. The Chinese or Iranians. Or even the North Koreans. They’ve probably launched a nation-wide cyber virus on our financial and government systems.”

  “I think I’m going to the ATM,” Regina said. “Get some money out.”

  “Me too,” Peter said. “Get some out while I still can.”

  “Let me try to get a hold of Craig,” Ray said, pulling his cell phone out of his suitcoat pocket.

  “Yeah, he might answer if you call,” Regina said, smiling. “You’re his favorite.”

  Ray didn’t bother responding. It was true that he and Craig had become good friends over the last ten years that he had worked here. Ray and his family even got together with Craig and his family a few weekends in the summer to cook out on the grill and swim in his pool. Craig lived in a mansion—obviously several paygrades higher than the rest of them. Ray scrolled through his phone and found Craig’s cell number. He dialed the number and then walked away as he brought his phone up to his ear, listening to the ringing.

  “We’ve already done that a hundred times,” Doug called after Ray. “He’s not answering.”

  Ray walked farther away from the others, listening to Craig’s recorded voice asking the caller to leave a message.

  “Hi, Craig,” Ray said into the phone, keeping his voice low. “It’s Ray. It’s a little after eight o’clock on Friday morning. We’re locked out of the building. There’s no security here and nobody’s keycards are working. We don’t know if there’s a system-wide malfunction or something. Anyway, we’re all waiting here for you, so . . . uh, just looking forward to getting to work.”

  Ray hung up and winced. His message sounded lame—he hated talking on voicemail. Craig usually didn’t get to work until about eight thirty or even nine o’clock sometimes. Maybe he was already on his way.

  But why wasn’t he answering his phone calls?

  Maybe Craig already knew about the security problem and he was trying to work it out. Maybe he didn’t want to waste time calling every employee back who was bugging him. Or maybe he didn’t want to call anyone back until he had an explanation for what was going on. There could be a lot of rational reasons why Craig wasn’t here or contacting them.

  Ray walked a little farther away from the group and scrolled down a little further in his contacts, finding Craig’s personal cell number. He pressed the screen, dialing the number.

  The phone rang four times and then went to voicemail.

  “Hi, Craig. This is Ray.” He glanced back to make sure he was well out of earshot of the others. “We’re here at work and we’ve been locked out. Something’s wrong with the keycards. And there’s no security here.” He dropped his voice even lower. “Look, people here are starting to panic a little because of the things they’ve been hearing on the news and internet.” He forced out a little chuckle. “And Doug’s not helping. He’s got everyone a little worked up. Just get back to me as soon as you can. Let us know if we need to stick around or go home.”

  Ray hung up the phone and looked at it like he expected it to ring at any second with Craig’s return call.

  It didn’t ring.

  He walked back to Doug and the others.

  “You didn’t reach him, did you?” Doug asked with that gash of a smile on his face.

  Ray gave a slight shake of his head. “I think we should wait until nine o’clock. Craig might still show up.”

  “No,” Regina said. “I’m going to the bank and get some money out.” She looked at John. “Will you call me if Craig gets here?”

  John nodded. “Sure.”

  “I’m going to get some money out, too,” Peter said, already walking towards his vehicle in the parking lot, lighting another cigarette along the way.

  Doug was busy looking something up on his phone. He shoved it at Ray. “Here. Look.”

  Ray looked down at the screen on Doug’s phone. An internet article exclaimed: Banks shutting down for the weekend. Another headline read: Accounts Frozen! They’re blaming it on a computer virus, but we know the truth!

  Doug showed John the article on his phone. Others were heading over and glancing at Doug’s phone. Many of them were looking up news on their own phones.

  “This is just the beginning,” Doug told everyone.

  “I guess you don’t need to get to the bank,” John told Doug.

  “I took cash out months ago,” Doug answered, beaming with pride. “I’ve always had a stash around the house.”

  Ray felt a sudden urge to punch Doug right in the face and wipe that stupid smile away. And then he cursed himself for allowing that kind of thought to enter his mind. He had always liked Doug in a way, even though he could be a little annoying most of the time. It was just this panicky feeling that was getting to him, that was all.

  More and more of Ray’s co-workers were heading to their vehicles in the parking lot, some of them breaking into a run.

  And Ray was even beginning to think about heading back to his 4-Runner. He didn’t want to admit it, but he was beginning to worry a little. That small stone of fear in his stomach was getting bigger, getting heavier, more acidic, churning now.

  CHAPTER 3

  Thirty minutes later Ray drove away from the CDC building and headed to the first bank he could find. Craig still hadn’t called back or showed up to work. None of the management from their office had shown up or contacted any of them. Just about all of the others had left, too.

  Doug told Ray that he would stick around for a little while longer to warn anyone else who came to work, but then he was going back to his house and pack up, head for his bugout property in West Virginia. He handed Ray a folded-up piece of paper where he’d drawn a crude map from Washington D.C. to his property, also writing down turn-by-turn directions below the map. “You bring your family up there with me if the shit gets really bad,” he’d told him. “You’re always welcome. You’re one of
my only friends.”

  In that moment Ray felt bad for wanting to punch Doug earlier. Deep down Doug was a good person. He was a little insecure, maybe lonely. Nobody really liked him at work, and his paranoia was tolerated to a point. But now, as much as Ray hated to admit it, Doug had been right all along. Maybe there had been a reason to be paranoid.

  Doug had wished Ray luck and proffered his hand.

  Ray had shaken Doug’s hand and left.

  After a few more minutes of driving, Ray spotted a bank on the corner of a busy intersection. Morning traffic, which was always congested in this area, was now nearly jammed to a standstill in a lot of places. Ten minutes later Ray managed to travel another block and get over to the side of the road and into the bank parking lot, which was overflowing with cars and trucks. There was a mob of people in front of the bank, at least forty of them.

  He found a parking spot on a median of grass between two of the parking areas. He parked so that the front of his SUV was facing out towards the street, a quick escape if needed. He got out of his Toyota, leaving the door open for a moment while he stripped off his suitcoat and tie. He didn’t want to seem like a possible bank employee in any way to this mob of irate and panicky customers. He threw the suitcoat and tie on the passenger seat, not worrying about neatness right now. He shut and locked the truck’s doors.

  Ray had expected a long line at the ATM, but there was no line, just this group of people gathered in front of the locked doors.

  An old woman stood apart from the others, fifty feet beyond the edge of the crowd, standing alone and staring at the mob.

  “What’s going on?” Ray asked the woman.

  The old woman looked at Ray like he’d just asked what color the sky was. “ATM’s down,” she answered in a husky smoker’s voice. She looked like she might weigh a hundred pounds. Her face was a roadmap of wrinkles. She seemed to have made a half-hearted attempt to tie her gray hair back in a bun, but quite a few strands were hanging down around her face. She was wrapped in a thin gray button-down sweater over what looked like pajamas, but she didn’t seem to be bothered by the cold.