And Darkness Fell Read Free Page B

deteriorated, and turning society into a
dark wasteland.
For ten years, I had been running my own auto detailing business, employing
six men who drove to people’s homes and thoroughly cleaned, washed, and
polished their vehicles. I provided a terrific service, using hard-working,
professional-minded young men and offering an unconditional money-back
guarantee. The business earned much repeat service and many valuable contacts.
But when the phones stopped working just a few months ago, customers could no
longer call for appointments. And when my boys and my faithful secretary Leona
stopped coming in to work, I knew the business was finished.
I remained in my apartment, scraping by on what cash I had left. I didn’t have
enough for rent, but that no longer mattered. The association running the
apartment complex had suspended all activities and collections weeks earlier.
Orlando Utilities suffered serious changes that damaged their service. As the
doping grew to mammoth proportions, their billing department turned chaotic,
dying quietly over a period of days.
One afternoon, the meter reader showed up, just as she had on the fifteenth of
every month. She got out of her small white pickup and shuffled over to my
building. Just as she approached my meter, she stopped moving and stood very
still, staring at the equipment in her hand. She remained standing there all
evening. By next morning, she’d fallen dead on the pavement.
A week later, Orlando Utilities announced it would operate until the end of
the month and then terminate its services. That meant all the stores on its grid
would eventually follow suit.
Although most of this chaos took effect fairly quickly, it hadn’t exactly
happened overnight. I’d noticed several bad omens years earlier, for instance,
while watching TV in my apartment. Every so often, the broadcasts would suffer
signal glitches followed by white noise. It wasn’t earth-shattering, so I didn’t give
it much thought at the time. I would just get up from the sofa, grab another beer,
and wait for the program to resume. I didn’t attribute such minuscule fuckups to
anything serious or far-reaching. The guy running things from the computer room
could have spilled coffee on the keyboard. He might have been shooting up, and
when the drug penetrated his system, he fell out of his chair, pulling out power
cords during his mind-blowing odyssey to the floor. Or maybe Barbie, the
stacked, sunny-faced weather girl, had distracted him by walking by.
Signal hiccups and other interruptions quickly took a back seat to other
meltdowns, however. Commercials began interfering with programming. Or, the
image would become grainy and soft, almost muted followed by a blast of sharp
and deafening audio, forcing me to lunge for the mute button. Eventually, normal
programming appeared only fitfully, a few seconds here and there, only to revert
back into inappropriately timed commercials and signal distortions.
One afternoon, as I watched a documentary, a grainy print of a home movie
appeared in the middle of a break, showing two naked teenagers humping away
in front of a swimming pool.
Then, a few months ago, the misspellings started, first in the commercials,
soon thereafter on the local news, and finally on the national news.
I saw an ad for a local law firm that went something like this:
CALL MARTIN LANG IF YOU WENT TO BE COMPONSATED
FOR YUR INJYRIES
     
And:
    DON’T LET THE IRS BETE YOU UPP—
CALL NORMIN BLAINE, ATTORNIE-AT-LAW—
HELL FIX YOU
The weather report in the screen crawl would read:
    LOCL SHOWERS
HIGHTS IN THE EIGHTYS LOWS IN THE SIXTYS
TOPICAL DISTURBENCES ON THE TOPRICS…
DETALES LATR ON, WITH THE EVNING NEWCAST
    Inquiries proved pointless. Each time I tried reporting a problem, I received a
busy signal or recording saying the number was not valid, or no longer in service.
I eventually stopped calling altogether and turned off the set.
    Things worsened. My WiFi connection, which