Roman Cesaro: Fallen Into Darkness

Robert held up his hotel door’s keycard and said, “Guess what? The electric lock doesn’t work.”

Kyle looked at his own keycard and asked, “Then how do you get into your room?”

“I’m going to find out,” Robert said, as he turned to go to the front desk.

There were several people standing by the desk, all with the same complaint. They had closed their room doors and now, since the keycards did not work, they could not get back in. The clerk looked flustered, confused, and fatigued. He was doing the best he could under the circumstances.

“I’m sorry, everyone,” explained the clerk, “Maintenance should be here by now. My phones are down and I can’t get hold of anyone.”

Robert knew the clerk just had begun working at the hotel recently and only worked the night shift. The young fellow probably could not help him, but he felt obligated to interject himself into the conversation. He stepped up to the desk and held his keycard up for the clerk to see. “Isn’t there a real key to use in the door in this type of situation?”

“Yeah, but I don’t have the tools to take the faceplate off the door lock to access the key hole. The maintenance staff has that and they know how to do it. I’m really sorry, the hotel manager, maintenance, and housekeeping should have been here by now. This is totally weird—”

The clerk stopped speaking as he recognized the tall man with the backward baseball cap and coveralls coming through the front lobby. It was Lee, the hotel’s maintenance man, the same man Robert had seen on the road with the stalled car. Robert stepped back from the desk because it was obvious the clerk needed to speak with Lee.

Lee stopped at the front desk. Looking frustrated, he asked, “Where’s the manager?”

“I don’t know. Should’ve been here by now,” the clerk replied, as he shrugged his shoulders.

Lee pointed out the hotel’s open front doors and said, “My car is dead. I tried to call for a tow, but my cell phone is dead, too.” Lee continued to point in the direction of his stalled car. “It’s on the side of the road for now and I can’t even turn on the flashers.” Lee threw his hands into the air to punctuate his frustration.

“Sorry about that, but it’s bad in here, too.” The night clerk shrugged his shoulders once more and said, “Here’s the situation. The door locks have failed for all of the people standing here. We need to get a key to each room.”

Feeling overwhelmed with the request, Lee took a deep breath, exhaled slowly, and rolled his eyes. As he took off the baseball cap and stuffed it into the front pocket of his coveralls, he said to the clerk, “I’ll get the toolbox and remove the faceplates. Get the keys ready.” Just as Lee started walking away, he stopped, turned around, and asked, “Did anybody see the light show outside?”

Robert responded, “Northern lights?”

Swiftly, Lee turned and walked toward the maintenance room, speaking over his shoulder. “That’s my guess. It was better than anything I saw when I was stationed in Alaska.” Lee raised his hand and extended one finger upward. “Give me a minute, I’ll be right back.”

Robert went back to the table where Kyle was sitting, and discovered that Richard was seated there, too. Robert sat down and gave them both an update on the door locks. Richard had a very different personality from Robert and Kyle. He was not known as a pleasant person, and the only reason they tolerated him was the simple fact that they had to work together. Richard was overweight, smoked, drank too much alcohol, and ate plenty of junk food. He was forty, like Robert, but anyone would guess he was at least sixty. He did not look healthy, with his yellowed teeth and bloodshot eyes. Richard sat at the table nervously fondling a pack of cigarettes and eating a sugar doughnut.

“There was a bright light coming in through the window and it woke my ass up,” Richard mumbled, speaking with his mouth full of sugar doughnut, then sipping the cold coffee. “I thought it was the sunrise. My alarm didn’t go off, I have no power in my room, my laptop is down, the phone in the room doesn’t work, and my cell phone won’t work, either.”

“Join the club,” Kyle responded, trying not to show his irritation. Richard smelled like an ashtray and was spitting doughnut crumbs as he spoke.

Leaning back in his chair to distance himself from Richard, Robert said, “I haven’t been back in my room yet, but I can’t wait to find out if my laptop is down, too.”

As the three men sat talking at their table, huddled around their dead cell phones, nobody noticed the short stocky man that had been standing close enough to hear their conversation. His head was shaved and he was wearing military camouflage. The insignia indicated that he was in the Air Force. The man was standing with his back to them and looking out the large windows. He turned to look at Robert, and spoke.

“I bet your laptop is fried along with everything else electronic in your room.”

Robert delayed his response. He was not sure if the stranger was talking to him. He quickly looked around and noticed no one else close by that the man could have been talking to. “Really? Why do you say that?” Robert asked, looking at the name and rank displayed on the stranger’s shirt. His rank was colonel and his shirt was unbuttoned and not tucked into his camouflaged pants. This was uncharacteristic of Robert’s mental stereotype of military personnel.

“I’m Colonel Sheppherd.” The colonel extended his hand to greet Robert, and Robert met his hand halfway. “Did anyone here see those lights in the sky? The aurora borealis?” the colonel asked, making eye contact with all three of the seated men.

“Yeah, I was outside jogging,” said Robert.

“After that, didn’t you notice electronic devices aren’t working and there’s no power?”

Robert, Kyle, and Richard looked at each other and shrugged their shoulders.

The colonel said, “It was an electromagnetic pulse, or EMP, that fried electronic devices and took the power grid down.” Colonel Sheppherd pointed to the dead cell phones on the table. “Like your phones.” Then he pointed toward the main lobby doors. “Outside, there was a transformer that blew apart. The EMP induced a current on the power lines and it exploded. Take a walk around. You’ll see what I’m talking about.”

As the colonel was speaking, the hotel clerk stepped around the corner and shined a flashlight from the lobby, pointing the beam of light at Robert. “Let me know when you’re ready to have your door key,” said the clerk.

Robert gave him the okay sign and a quick wave.

Richard turned to the colonel and said, “Okay, dumb shit; I just saw a flashlight that was obviously still working.” Richard was obnoxiously shaking his head in disagreement. “You keep talking about your alien invasion. I need a smoke.”

Richard stood up and grabbed two more sugar doughnuts from the counter. He noticed a roll of aluminum foil that had been used to wrap biscuits, still cold from the dead refrigerator. Richard pulled out a two-foot length of the foil and went back to the table. He put the foil sheet on the table in front of the colonel and said, “If you make a hat out of this, the aliens can’t read your mind.” Richard turned and walked away, holding a cigarette in one hand and two doughnuts in the other.

Ignoring the comment, Colonel Sheppherd folded the foil into a plane and tossed it at Richard’s back. By the time the foil plane hit Richard, he had stuffed both doughnuts into his mouth.

“As you can see, Richard is an ass,” Kyle said.

The colonel nodded his head and said, “Gentlemen, I’m not joking. I saw the aurora from my window this morning, and then I went to have a walk around. It really happened. Anything electric, with a computer chip, is ruined. That flashlight you just saw doesn’t have a computer chip.” He paused to take a sip of the cold coffee. “Most cars, jet planes, satellites, the trucks that bring food to the grocery store, you name it, anything that supports our modern way of life is now history.” He took another sip of cold black coffee and wondered if that was the last coffee he would ever drink. “Take my advice and bug out now. Get home to your families. When people realize there is no more food showing up at the grocery store and the cities can’t pump clean water into the water towers, the population is going to panic. That is when, shall we say, the shit hits the fan. I give it three days to total chaos.”