Alex Knightly - Sudden Darkness - A Post-Apocalyptic EMP Thriller

She twisted the dial and waited for a few seconds to allow any gas in the air to disperse. Then she tried again. Silence. No hiss of gas, even though the flat was connected to the mains supply.

She tried the light switches too, flicking them on and off at the wall. Nothing.

“Huh.”

She tried her phone again.

Nothing.

It was then that she moved to the window and saw something that really alarmed her. It was completely dark outside—something she had never seen before in London. The city sky didn’t so much get dark as fade from blue or grey to a hazy orange glow from all the streetlights.

“Bugger,” she muttered. If she was at home she’d have a torch at hand, but she didn’t. Nor did she know where the fuse box was.

Not that it mattered.

The only light was from the moon, which was little more than a sliver.

This wasn’t a problem with the fuse box. The gas was out too. And the streetlights.

They were on different supplies. It didn’t make sense.

She looked around in the darkness, her hunger forgotten now. What the hell was going on? She had definitely charged her phone overnight and the battery had been fine when she called Dan. She knew that. It always beeped when it was running low.

She pinched the bridge of her nose and tried to figure out what to do.

It was difficult. Her brain felt like it was wrapped in a thick layer of cotton wool. For once, she regretted training so hard—it might not have silenced her thoughts completely, but it had definitely dulled her brain.

She leant against the countertop and stared out into the darkness.

Think, Annie.

Gas out. Power out. Phone out. Not out of reception, but completely dead. Was it a widespread mains problem extending to the source of the gas and all the mobile phone towers in range as well as the supply to street lights? Maybe, but that didn’t explain why her phone had died.

Unless , she thought, I was so tired and hungry that I didn’t hear the warning beep telling me the battery was low.

That was the only plausible explanation.

How soon would it be fixed? Probably right away if it was so widespread that it affected the gas mains as well as the phone towers. It was bound to affect hospitals too and they wouldn’t allow that.

Two things struck her then; two separate facts that made her blood run cold and her body feel shaky and clammy.

One: she had worked on scenarios like this. The phone and gas companies would have generators to ensure there were no breaks in supply. Sure, those companies went down from time to time, but together?

And two, the thing that worried her most: her phone hadn’t been low on battery. She was sure of that.

She knew of only one possible explanation for what she was seeing.

She shook her head.

“No,” she whispered. Her eyes filled with tears and her heart raced in a way that it usually only did after too much caffeine. “No.”

It can’t be .

It had been a long day. She was half delirious from hunger. There had to be a more reasonable explanation that she wasn’t seeing.

Even as she told herself that, though, her attention wandered back to the window. There were no sirens. No car horns. Nothing. It was as if the world had simply stopped.

“Take the controls.”

“What? We’re landing soon.”

“Yeah well,” David said with a shrug. “Nature calls. I thought you said you could fly this thing.”

He unfastened his seatbelt, smiling at the look on the young man’s face. Behind them, Jackson, the first officer, looked to all the world as if he was fast asleep. David winked. They’d done this to every newbie they’d ever flown with. There was nothing at all to be alarmed about—it was the best way to test if a young buck had the balls to captain an Airbus.

If anything actually happened, Jackson would be there to take over. Baptism by fire, except there was really no risk at all. It was all in hand; the kid would thank them in the end. Better than all this micro-managing, hand-holding crap they learnt nowadays.

David smiled to himself as he unlocked the door to the cockpit and let himself out. He nodded at Martina. She was old school, like him. She got it. There weren’t many of the old girls left these days.

He glanced at the trio seated in the front row and his smile vanished. Those were the days alright; now long gone. He loved the old photos of women in fur coats and men in three-piece suits and smart hats. None of this half-dressed, half-cut nonsense.

He sighed. He missed the days when flying was a rarity and people looked at him with the same respect they might give to a surgeon or a lawyer. There was none of that anymore. Women still threw themselves at him, of course, but these days that only happened when they were pissed and he was on a stopover in Mallorca or some other hellhole.

Christ , he thought, I’m getting too old for this.

He looked down the aisle and saw more of the same. Men in vests, dribbling in their sleep after tiring themselves out shouting and roaring at the start of the short flight. Women sunburnt to a crisp and comatose after drinking their own body weight in vodka over the course of their week’s holiday in the sun.

Once upon a time he’d done the transatlantic flights. But then the airline had been bought out and the union had buggered up and… well, he supposed he was somewhat bitter about the whole thing. Did no-one value experience anymore? Next there’ll be self-flying planes, as if guiding a hulking great jet through the sky is something to be sneezed at.

“Hello, Captain.”

He looked down. It was an elderly woman draped in a bright kaftan. She must have been in her eighties; her face was lined and sunken, but there was still a liveliness about her that made him smile. She had that look about her that told him she’d been a hell-raiser in her day and probably still knew how to enjoy a good party.

“Hello, dear. Have you had a pleasant flight?”

She pursed her lips. He couldn’t usually stand to look at old women’s lips—cat’s arses, he called them—but she was different. There was such mischief in her eyes.

It wasn’t that he fancied her—good god, no. He was only in his sixties. He hadn’t even graduated to fifty-year-olds yet, never mind OAPs.

“It’s a damn sight more pleasant now that those yobs have stopped singing.” She leaned forward. “Shouldn’t you be flying the plane instead of chatting to me?”

He smiled. “Don’t you worry, my dear. I have a very capable first officer back in the cockpit.”

A staticky buzz in the air indicated that the intercom from the cabin had been switched on. The only sound was Keith’s laboured breathing. “Good evening, ladies and gentlemen,” he said after an awkward pause. He sounded more like a child than a twenty-five-year-old man with a pilot’s licence.

“I’d best get back,” David muttered.

Honestly. The guy had done fine up to now—why hadn’t he just taken a breath before getting on the intercom? He’d give nervous passengers a field day with that sort of tone. Did they not teach common sense anymore? Even David felt nervous listening to him and he’d flown thousands of hours and could probably do it blindfolded if he had to.

He passed Martina buckling herself in and rapped on the door of the cockpit. Jackson got up to let him in. Keith was still at the controls.

“I stepped in to get him off the radio.”

David nodded. “Good work.” He closed the door. “You’re doing well, Keith, my boy. But don’t ever get on the intercom sounding like that. You’ll have them in a panic and that’s the last thing we need.”