Darkness - Book One of the Dark Series of Novels

Chapter Twenty

Edmund sat on a hill overlooking the entrance to Joshua's workplace – a high security NASA research facility not far from downtown Houston. There was only one way in or out through a secure checkpoint. Josiah would need to come through here. Edmund watched as the sun came down. He fought the urge to sleep, but there was something about the twilight, the calm dusk – there was something logical about sleeping while he could, while it was likely that none of the engineers were at work. The window of attack for the day had passed, and Edmund took advantage of it.

As he slept, he felt the distinct sensation of being launched – as if his entire life he had been a smooth rock in the pocket of a slingshot pulled tight then suddenly released.

***

He awoke in Budapest the day of the collapse, the day everyone else remained asleep. He observed through his own eyes his memories. Dressing casually in his small bachelor apartment. Going to the door, opening it, closing it behind him, locking it. Walking down the hall past dozens of sleeping people who would never wake.

He walked down the stairs, skipping past the sleeping doorman, thinking nothing unusual was at play. It was early and Antonin, the doorman, often slept at his post. As he observed, he reached out to his future self, tried to touch him, tried to make him aware, but he was ignored. Instead, as he had before, he strode out into the brief darkness prior to sunrise and walked two doors down to Pietro's café, only to find it closed. He waited. He knocked on the door. He peered in the windows and saw nothing and no movement. He turned to the street and looked at his watch. It was the right time. The air was right. The light was right. The temperature was right, but now he noticed that nothing was moving – the cars sat at the intersection as the traffic lights cycled green-west-east to green-north-south. Everything still, everything calm, everything quiet.

Edmund went to the nearest car – red paint, Italian plates. The engine was running. He looked in the window. He relived the confusion which spread to terror as he went up and down the street and found no conscious people. As the terror gripped him, he went back to his apartment building, bounding up the stairs and knocking on the doors of the neighbours he knew. No one answered.

He went back into his apartment booting up his computer and turning on the Tv. He flipped through the channels of the Tv – some seemed to be running, others were down. One or two had nothing but the piercing siren of the emergency broadcast system. He waited on these channels for an announcement but nothing came. He turned to his computer, checking activity on Twitter, Facebook and in his e-mail. None of his friends were online.

The leading, trending topic on Twitter was #apocalypse. There were only a few hundred messages going back and forth. He stayed a while on his twitter page, following any active members he came across. He ate little over the next three days but connected with a gentleman named Raj from Mumbai. Raj reported a few hundred people rushing about his once-bustling city, looting, but peacefully so. No resistance, no organization. Raj had seen one police officer at a store nearby his apartment, asked if the officer knew anything, had any official information. "Nothing," the officer had responded. "Nothing."

During the next two weeks Edmund read in horror as the few hundred active users tweeted the demise of family and friends, all discovered sleeping in virtually every corner of the world. Each day less and less people posted tweets as they gave in to despair. Edmund tried to counsel several out of suicide attempts with little success. Three weeks after the collapse Raj reported that he was leaving home – the stench of dead and decaying bodies on the streets of Mumbai was too much to bear. He was going to find the highest building in Mumbai and live there, on the highest floor, above the stench. Edmund, for his part, had cleared out the floor of his apartment building of dead bodies. He never heard from Raj again.