Roman Cesaro
FALLEN INTO DARKNESS
Chapter One
It was early on a Monday morning and Robert Worth had just finished a five-mile run under the big sky of Helena, Montana. It was still dark, just before sunrise, when he began his jog, and that gave him a chance to admire the beautiful stars in the clear dawn sky. The sun had just begun to break the horizon, fading the stars slowly away, as he finished his morning run. He truly enjoyed running early in Montana, especially the way the air smelled. It was clean, fresh, country air.
Cooling down from his run, he stepped off the sidewalk and onto the far end of his hotel’s parking lot, slowly walking to the main entrance as he caught his breath. The hotel was his temporary home for two weeks while he was in town on business. He stopped, turned his back to the hotel, and with his hands on his hips, stood quietly and let the cool breeze remove the heat under his sweat-soaked clothes. It was nearly summer, but the air was crisp on his skin.
The rising sun was just breaking the eastern horizon, its halo slowly cresting the silhouette of the Rocky Mountains. Tilting his head toward the sky, he closed his eyes and absorbed the peacefulness of the silent morning. Suddenly, with his eyes still closed, he sensed a flash of colored light rising from the northern horizon. He opened his eyes to a spectacular assortment of meandering colored lights, curling free from the silhouette of the Rocky Mountains and arcing up across the sky, intermingling and dancing with an intense brightness. Fluorescent hues extended from the northern to the southern horizon in an instant. The celestial lights were so bright that as he turned to the south, he noticed that his body cast a faint shadow on the hotel’s parking lot. The tortuous lights in the sky were approaching a frenzy of brightness and color. He mumbled under his breath at how amazing this was, and, looking for his cell phone, he patted the pockets of his sweatpants to find it and record a video of the impromptu light show. Finding the outline of his phone in his right pocket, he swiftly retrieved the device and lifted it toward the sky to capture the luminous ballet unfolding above.
Robert repeatedly tried to turn the device on and noticed that the cell phone maintained a blank screen. He thought that this was strange because he could remember turning it on earlier to access the clock to time his run. He fumbled with the power button several more times before acquiescing to the dead phone. He dropped it back into his pocket and continued to stare above, slowly turning in a circle to fully capture the image of the colored lights that had painted the early morning sky.
Suddenly, he noticed a loud humming sound. He turned to see sparks violently flying from a transformer suspended on an electric utility pole not more than a block away. Then, just as suddenly, the transformer exploded into a ball of fire. The explosion made him flinch and he turned reflexively to cover his face. For a brief moment, the flash of light from the explosion cast shadows across the parking lot, then an arc of sparks was all that remained where the transformer was attached. The electrical transmission lines were on the ground, arching and writhing like venomous snakes striking at their prey.
He cautiously lowered his hands and looked around again. Gradually the intensity of the aurora began to diminish. As the glow in the sky slowly faded away, he looked to see if anyone else was witnessing this. Across the parking lot was a road parallel with the hotel. He saw a car, with the driver’s side door and hood open, stopped on the road. A man wearing dark coveralls and a baseball cap turned backwards was bent over the front of the car, cursing into the engine bay. Turning back to the hotel’s main entrance, Robert noticed that all the exterior lights were off and the hotel’s automatic sliding glass front doors were in the open position. Walking toward the hotel’s entrance, he could see that inside the lobby was dark, too. As he stepped into the lobby, he could just barely make out the night clerk standing at the front desk. It was the same clerk that had greeted him on his return from his other early morning runs and Robert felt embarrassed that he still did not know the young man’s name.
“Good morning,” the clerk said, as he passed a cheap plastic flashlight from one hand to another. “Sorry, lights are out. Hopefully, they’ll come on soon. You better get your coffee while it’s still hot.”
As the clerk spoke, he gestured, using the flashlight to point at the complimentary breakfast area. There were a few people fumbling around next to the breakfast buffet, trying to do their best with no electric lights. Robert stepped into the dining area and retrieved the cell phone from his sweatpants again. After sitting down, he tried turning it on once more, this time to use the glowing screen as a flashlight. His frustration grew each time he pressed the power button. He knew it was fully charged and wondered why the phone, being less than a month old, would have failed this soon. Robert glanced up just as Kyle Brown stepped up next to him at the small table.
“Mine threw craps, too,” Kyle commented. Kyle, like Robert, was an information technology consultant, and they were traveling together for the same job. They had traveled to Helena with two other coworkers, Henry and Richard.
Robert and Kyle did not fit the nerdy computer geek stereotype. Robert was physically fit with a rugged physique. He had just turned forty and was older than Kyle, who had recently graduated from a university in the Midwest. Although Kyle was a jogger, routinely exercised, and was very physically fit, he chose not to run with Robert. He never could maintain Robert’s fast pace. Henry was older and nearing retirement. The joke around the office was that Henry’s first job was programming an abacus. Richard and Henry fit nicely into the nerdy stereotype. They never exercised, worshipped cable television, and loved to eat junk food.
“Your phone isn’t working either?” asked Robert.
Kyle shook his head, adding, “I tried to turn on my laptop to check my email, and… nothing.”
“No email?” Robert asked.
“No computer. It’s dead,” replied Kyle.
Robert looked down at his cell phone again and tried to think of an explanation why Kyle’s phone and laptop would have died, too. “I bet it was a power surge. Your phone and computer were plugged into an outlet during the night and I bet there was a power surge.” Robert was anxiously tapping his phone on the table. “They got fried. That explains the blackout. Something must be wrong at a power station nearby.”
“Nope, my laptop and phone weren’t plugged in,” Kyle replied, shaking his head in frustration.
The orange glow of the morning sun came through the dusty windows of the hotel’s breakfast area. The glare from the sunrise reflected off the wall clock’s glass cover, capturing Robert’s attention. He had just realized the clock’s hands had not moved since he sat down. Baffled, he stared at the clock on the wall and could not believe the incredible coincidence.
“Kyle, I’m going back to my room. You can use my laptop to get your email. Sit tight, I’ll be back in a flash.”
Robert stood up and briskly went into the hallway and toward his door. He slid his keycard to disengage the electric lock to his room, but got no response. He tried swiping the card slow, fast, upward, and finally downward through the slot. It would not work. Frustrated, he mumbled to himself, “Shit… happy Monday.”
Feeling defeated, Robert slowly returned to the hotel’s breakfast room that he left just moments earlier. Kyle, eating a bowl of cold cereal, had moved to a table closer to the large picture windows that were now letting in the first few rays of morning sunlight.
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?”