Blackout

6

I jumped into my Chevy and turned it over. It caught right away. I guess my paranoia was telling me it might not start at all, that whatever had sapped the electricity from the power lines might have done the same thing to my battery. I needn’t have worried. I pulled out into the street, driving as fast as I dared which in that darkness wasn’t very fast at all.

I clicked on the high beams and was absolutely amazed—and mortified—at the quality of the night around me. Again, I was struck by the dark itself, which was perfectly unnatural. It was too thick, too complete, too seamless, if that makes any sense. Usually, the dark of night is inconsistent, in that there are dark shadowy pockets blending into grays. It’s never perfectly dark. Such a thing probably does not even exist on this planet except in a deep mountain cave or ocean abyss. Even when electric lights go out and candles and lanterns are extinguished, there’s still moonlight and starlight. Even if it’s cloudy, light still gets through.

But no light was getting through.

It was like one of those shades they put over bird cages at night had been dropped over the world. It was perfectly black.

I saw the white swords of flashlight beams as people tried to make sense of things. At first, I saw quite a few people, but the closer I got to downtown, the fewer of them I saw. I came wheeling around a corner and I nearly crashed into a car that was parked sideways right in the middle of the road. It was a sedan, a Lexus, a rich-man’s ride. Both doors were open and I could see there was no one inside.

Dammit.

I climbed out and went over to it, the headlights from the pickup casting a huge shadow of myself before me like something from a film noir flick. The Lexus was still running, headlights on. I looked around and saw no one.

“Hey!” I called out. “Move this damn car!”

My voice echoed and died, but there was no reply. Piss on it. I jumped behind the wheel and backed it out of the way, bumping into the curb. I killed the engine and jogged back to my pickup. It was incredibly silent as I got within a block of downtown. I came up the street and a figure jumped out into the road, scaring the shit right out of me. Just some guy waving his arms back and forth.

I pulled to a stop and he came over. He was a young guy, maybe college age, and he was carrying a bag of groceries of all things. A loaf of bread was poking out the top.

“Dude!” he said. “You can’t go any farther! You gotta turn back! Something happened up there and all the people are gone, they’re just…gone! There’s nobody left! Even the cop shop is empty! You gotta go back the other way!”

“What happened?” I asked him, a cold chill settling along my spine. “Where did they go?”

He shook his head. “Don’t fucking ask me! I woke up and I heard them screaming and when I got outside, they were all gone! You hear me? They were all gone, dude!”

He started running off and I called to him, but he didn’t stop. All I heard was his fading voice: “Get out, dude! Get out!” Then he was gone and I was more confused than ever, filled with mounting anxiety. Something had happened and was still happening and I was pretty certain it didn’t have anything to do with a weird electrical storm. I was pretty sure the opposite was true—the electrical storm was a result of it and not the other way around. It made no sense, but nothing did that night.

I tried my cell again, but all I got was that same high-pitched whining sound.

I threw caution to the wind and drove slowly forward.

That’s when I heard screaming. I hit the brakes and the scream came again, louder this time, cycling into a high, hysterical shrilling that ended abruptly. I waited. There was nothing else. I grabbed my flashlight and leaped out of the truck. I knew without a doubt it was the guy I had just spoken to. The caliber of that screaming voice was the same. I shined the light around in arcs. “Hey!” I called out. “Hey! Where are you? Call out to me!” But nobody called out, there was just that familiar dead silence broken only by the idling hum of my pickup. I kept moving farther out into the dark in ever-widening circles, trying to spot the guy.

I never found him.

But I did find his groceries.

They were spilled all over the sidewalk—the loaf of bread, bottles of energy drinks, cans of Chef Boyardee pasta, beef jerky, a few apples, a shattered jar of pizza sauce. I looked and looked, but he was just gone. In my head, I kept hearing his voice: I heard them screaming and when I got outside they were all gone! You hear me? They were all gone, dude! It was enough. I was getting the hell out of there. Whatever was out there, whatever was snatching people off into the night, I knew damn well that I was hardly equipped to handle it.

I went back to the truck.

Then, hand on the door, I paused.

In the distance, I saw what looked like a giant eye.

It wasn’t an eye, of course. At least, I hoped it wasn’t an eye. It was a large, perfectly round orb of pale blue light that was hovering over rooftops not a city block from where I was. It was like the searchlight of a helicopter and for one moment I was sure that’s what it was. The only problem was that helicopters make noise and this thing, whatever it was, was perfectly silent as it drifted over the roofs, moving gradually west.

I stood there, trembling.

Something about it—many things, in fact—scared the hell out of me. It wasn’t right and I knew it. It was part of what was going on and I could not convince myself otherwise. I climbed back into the truck and threw it in reverse, backing well down the street before turning around. I was sweating. I was shaking. That eerie orb had filled me with dread and my survival instinct was amped up. I peeled out of there, heading back towards Piccamore Way as fast as I could safely go. I kept checking the rearview, but the orb was not following me as I feared. I saw it still moving west like a very large and very slow shooting star.

I breathed a sigh of relief.

I pulled over and tried to calm myself. What I needed was a cigarette, but I didn’t have any. That was a good thing because I would have started puffing away right then and there. It was coming and I knew it, the stress of the situation demanded it. In fact, I was half-tempted to break into a store and grab a carton. I got my nerves under control and threw the pickup in drive.

As I did so, I saw a sweeping bluish light coming up the avenue just ahead. I threw the truck in park and killed the engine and lights. The blackness rushed in and I was almost grateful for it the way a mouse is grateful when an owl cannot see him. And owl is applicable because the orb came over the rooftops and it looked very much like the eye of an owl.

As it came moving up the street, I crouched down on the seat.

The night was so black that I couldn’t really see what it was and I had a pretty good feeling I didn’t want to. All I knew is that behind the orb was a dark shape that looked very large. The orb moved closer and closer. Unlike a searchlight, it cast very little illumination. It was like one of those tactical lights special operations forces use. As it passed over the truck, I thought I was going to have a coronary my heart was palpitating so badly. The orb was immense and metallic-looking, very shiny, and had to be about the size of a tractor tire. It filled the cab with a deadly pale phosphorescence.

If it was aware of me, it gave no sign.

It drifted overhead, maybe twenty feet up, and something—actually, many things—scraped over the roof of the cab like fingernails. And then it was gone. I waited there another five minutes until I was sure it wasn’t coming back, then started up the truck and drove back to Piccamore.