Dark Sky

02 - The Coming Storm

Chapter Two

30 Minutes Before The Bombs

The key clicked in the lock and with a twist of the handle the front door burst open. A little harder than normal but Joe Randell had his hands full of shopping and he had kicked the door open with his foot as soon as it unlatched. As he entered almost dropping the carrier bags twice he flicked the door with his foot once again, sending it swinging back to its closed position with a bang.

He stumbled clumsily to the kitchen of his old Victorian terraced home and dumped the carrier bags of shopping onto the work surfaces close to the refrigerator. He only just made it too. He had been close to losing them from his grip, which would have been disastrous for the eggs.

Throwing his keys down next to the microwave he opened the refrigerator and removed a carton of orange juice. It had been a long day at work in the heat of summer and he was in need of a well earned chilled drink.

Work these days was tiring and had become a chore. He used to like being a communications engineer, working on a wide range of communications equipment. But since his promotion he had been stuck in a stuffy office and didn't do much hands on work anymore. Had it have not been for the large wage slip at the end of each month he might have quit the office life a long time ago.

With his medium build and designer stubble he looked better in work overalls than the suit he was required to wear these days. His short shaved hair didn't really go with the suit either but longer hair just wasn't him, the suit earned him more money and that was what counted now.

He finished the last of the orange juice from the glass and placed it immediately into the sink ready for the next round of washing up. He noticed as he always did that the cold tap was dripping, a defective washer that he had been meaning to fix for weeks. In fact there were a few maintenance jobs building up around the old house that were in need of attention, but by the time he got home from work he was normally too tired to even think about them. Tonight would be no different. He intended to collapse in front of the TV with a few cold beers as he did most nights.

The house was old and over a hundred years old. A typical Victorian build that didn't really reflect the salary he was on. He had owned the house since his early 20s when he had married. This had been the first house he had lived in as a newly wed and when his salary had been smaller. Moving to a newer or bigger property just didn't rank very high on his list of things to do.

It did to his wife though.

She had been gone now for a few months. Claiming she had just grown tired of married life and the house. Joe knew different though. She would never admit to it just before a divorce but he knew she had left him for someone else. He had been almost sure even before she left and so when she did he had not been all that shocked. He wasn't that bothered either. At least she had gone whilst he was still young enough to do something with his life.

The truth of the matter however was that at thirty five years of age he was burnt out. Mainly due to the stress of work, it wasn't as easy as the manual work he used to do. No, he was happy to come home every day and drink beer in front of the TV.

He moved to the table and sat. He picked up the remote control and turned the small kitchen TV on and selected the news channel as he did everyday as a bit of background noise.

"Maybe there will be something on about what went on in America yesterday." He thought to him self as he picked up the mounting pile of mail he had been collecting all week.

It had been all over the news yesterday. There had been some kind of terrorist incident, explosions in multiple cities. But the news had been sketchy and information coming out of the country was very little. It had been reported that the American government had gone quiet and had not communicated with anyone for hours. Even our own government seemed to be in the dark about what exactly had happened and all that was clear it was very serious.