Darkness Descending

By A.R. Anderson

About the Book
Darkness Descending vividly describes the corruption and failure of the political elite in the United States. As a result of these events, the country is brought to the brink of war, there is a cyber-attack on the U.S. power grid, and there is a release of a virus that causes people to be either killed outright or engulfed by a murderous rage. Nathan, Sarah, Brandon, and Angela must struggle to survive the hellscape they find themselves living in now.

About the Author
A.R. Anderson was born in Michigan, where he also currently resides. He is a forty-eight year old heavy duty diesel transit mechanic. He has been a professional mechanic for the past thirty years and plans to retire in 6.5 years. His hobbies include hunting, camping, shooting, gunsmithing, loading ammo, woodworking, and reading. He has a lovely wife, an annoying dog, and a quarter horse who he claims his wife loves more than she loves him.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Dorrance Publishing Company
• Release date: Jun 13, 2023
• ISBN: 9798886835519

Book preview

Darkness Descending

By A.R. Anderson

Chapter One:

Oh Hell!

It was May 20th of 2023 when it all really fell apart, the American economy was shot by that point, gas was up to $12.55 national average and a loaf of bread would set you back almost $9.00 bucks. Then the President of the United States Joe Biden died of a heart attack. I have to be honest my first thought was maybe some of the policies that led us off the cliff would be turned around but then I remembered who was waiting in the wings. We now had President Kamala Harris (hereafter known as that crazy bitch), the smelly stuff was about to hit the spinny thing, Oh Hell!

The first thing that crazy bitch did was to announce her new Vice President Stacy Abrams, you know the failed gubernatorial candidate from Georgia who is still claiming that she won the Governor’s race. The second thing she did was to announce a no fly zone over Ukraine which effectively launched World War III. If things had been left to run their course and the no fly zone had gone into effect then the U.S. and Russia would have been shooting at each other rather quickly, but before that crazy bitch could actually send any of our fighters into Ukrainian airspace the lights in the U.S. Went dark. The Chinese hackers had entered the game!

A cyber-attack was launched at the power grid and we in the States found out really fast just how pathetically vulnerable we were. The power failed on the Eastern Seaboard first, then the cascading effects ran across the country in no time flat. I have no idea how many separate cyber-attacks it took for them to drop our entire grid but I can tell you it didn’t take them long to get it done.

At this point that crazy bitch recalled all U.S. Servicemen back to the country. She simply abandoned our presence on the world stage so that she could declare martial law here and wall herself off in the White House surrounded by troops (not that it did much good in the end). The Chinese chose this time to attack Taiwan, then the Middle East exploded, Israel came under attack within days. I believe that they were the first to launch a nuclear strike but I may be mistaken about that, they most definitely weren’t the last.

Taiwan fell in about 2 minutes flat and much of the Middle East was now a radioactive hot zone. Europe was drawn into the fighting between Ukraine and Russia. With the grid down people were dying in droves across the United States. You may not be aware of this but decades ago the U.S. Government had done a study of the effects of a total failure of the power grid and had determined that up to 90% of the population would die within the first six months. Just to put that into perspective that would be almost 300 million dead Americans. In the first world people have forgotten how to survive without modern conveniences. Hell even when people did have the right skills the mortality rate was enormous in comparison to what it was with modern medicine.

You may think at this point that at least it can’t really get any worse, you’re wrong! It seems that the Department of Defense had been funding some labs in Ukraine doing Bio-Medical Research. Basically nasty ass diseases that the government simply couldn’t wait to figure out some way to weaponize. Now let me tell you it is not a great idea to drop bombs on facilities that are housing these nasty ass little buggers. Of course someone should have told President Putin that before he went and did it. Most of the diseases in the lab that was hit were destroyed in the bombing (that’s one of the advantages of using a thermobaric bomb) but at least one of them got out, and damn it was a truly nasty little son of a bitch.

Some enterprising soul at one of the labs had been experimenting with a disease called Crimean-Congo Hemorrhagic Fever. (Hell of a mouthful isn’t it?) Originally this bug caused flu-like symptoms and irritability, over time progressing to liver failure, kidney deterioration and lung failure with a 30% death rate. When it got out into the wide world, though, it wasn’t exactly the same bug that it had entered the lab. Don’t ask me the particulars about what was done or how because I have no damn idea but it spread like wildfire with a hell of a lot higher death rate.

On day one of the symptoms (about 3 days after infection) people thought they had the flu. By day 8 many of them were dead; now do you remember me saying that one of the symptoms was irritability? Well that symptom was seriously ramped up with this form of the disease really more like homicidal rage. People were beating each other, killing each other, and of course infecting each other between days 1 and 8.

That all would have been bad enough but those who survived having the disease didn’t just go back to the way they were before. It seems that the changes to their personalities were permanent. They settled down a bit after the initial phase but that only made them more dangerous in the long run.

We were left with a large population of people with all of the animal cunning and cruelty that humans are capable of but no moral limitations at all, a population of psychopaths. Lovely huh? The End Of The World As We Know It. I used to like that song, not so much anymore and I didn’t ever feel fine about it.

It didn’t take long for the cities to become killing fields. Not everyone was susceptible to the disease. Immunity really wasn’t all that rare but the ones who didn’t get it still had to contend with those that did running around trying to beat everything they came into contact with that had a heart beat to death. (I feel sorry for the dogs that were just looking for someone to pet them.)

On top of that you had people who were still sane but who decided that this would be a fine time to let loose with all of their baser desires. The human race in my opinion has always been a collection of assholes vying to see who can get higher on the ladder so they can shit on those below them. Even when we should come together for our own benefit, we can’t help but go after each other. Like I said before not many people had the skills to live in the new reality so the simplest things became deadly issues in a hurry.

OK, now you’re caught up on the world stage. Since this is my story I am telling here I should probably let you know a little bit about myself. My name is Nathan Corry and before the collapse of the world I was what was known as a crazy ass prepper (not so crazy as it turns out). I was not some amazing special forces guy or even a regular military guy, I was simply a normal working stiff trying to survive in a country that seemed to revel in making it more and more difficult every day just to keep a roof over your head and food on the table.

At 35 years old I had spent the last 15 years fixing transit buses for the city of Detroit, Michigan and living in a suburb of Detroit called Roseville in an OK house with mostly pain in the ass neighbors and a few others that I liked. The American dream right? Take something you used to love such as fixing cars and pervert it trying to make a living at it till you learn to hate what you used to love.

When I wasn’t at work I could pursue the things I still enjoyed such as hunting, camping, shooting, reading, prepping, spending time with my friends, and of course my live in girlfriend, the beautiful Sarah Davie. On the night that the lights went out for good, Sarah and I were sitting in our living room under a blanket streaming a stupid, stupid movie (I can’t even remember which one now). It was just another Sunday night dreading the coming of Monday morning.

Chapter Two:

Lights Out

The lights flickered for a moment and then it was dark. Fortunately for us as I said before I am a prepper, and also being from Southeastern Michigan Sarah and I were very used to the power going out for a couple of days at a time here and there. So when the lights died out I grabbed a flashlight that I keep handy until I could get the oil lantern lit, I broke out the Eton crank radio and proceeded to try and find some tunes, I found nothing but static. I was perfectly ready to see if Sarah wanted to pass the time in a decidedly more fun manner when she announced that she was tired, gave me a kiss and headed towards the bedroom, damn!

As I wasn’t ready for bed yet I did what all modern red blooded Americans do when they’re bored, I grabbed my phone. Now as I stated earlier, power outages I’m used to but when the phone said that it had no signal it began to peak the curiosity of my inner prepper and I tried to search for a news station on the Eton, nothing but static again. I was beginning to get worried at this point but there was not really much I could do about it till the morning, off to bed, flip on the light switch out of habit … Damn, crawl into bed with Sarah, she was softly snoring already, I still had no chance there … Damn!

The alarm clock has a battery back-up, and it goes off at 4:30 in the morning. I should have thrown the damn thing against a wall, no way am I not calling in when the coffee pot isn’t working. Still a bit groggy I headed for my phone to call the shop but of course I still had no signal. Begrudgingly I headed off to get dressed. The whole ride into work things were getting to look worse and worse, nothing was open and the radio was still just a staticky annoyance.

When I pulled into the terminal parking lot the big diesel generator was humming away and the foreman was sitting behind the desk but the time clock wasn’t working since it had no internet connection. I was promptly informed that because we had no phones, computers, or bus tracking systems that could work without the net we wouldn’t be running any routes today, I could turn around and head home not to return until they called me back in. I knew I should have just gone back to bed this morning. When I got back to the house Sarah already had my camp stove out with pot of coffee brewing and breakfast going.

God bless the woman; I simply do not want to function without my coffee in the morning.

With the first jolt of caffeine hitting my system it was time to fire up the generator and find out what the hell was going on, I religiously start the genny every other week so the thing fired up after a couple seconds of cranking and blessed electricity started flowing through the house. I headed back in to partake of breakfast, grabbed a plate along with the second cup of black liquid gold for the day, then went into the basement to get the ham radio set up and running.

After a couple of minutes fiddling with the radio I started to listen in on some conversations already in progress across the country. It didn’t take long for my jaw to hit the desk-top, I sat and listened for God only knows how long and found that the entire country was in the same predicament that I was facing. No power, no internet, no cell service, the whole damn place was dark and quiet with the exception of the ham radio operators. Speculation was running wild until about a half hour after I sat down an official voice broke in across the bands.

To all Americans, there has been an attack on the power grids that has occurred all across the United States, you are advised to shelter in place until further notice from your local officials. That was it. I found out that this message had been repeating on the top of each hour for some time now, my blood began to run cold I just sat for a bit, I wasn’t really all there mentally, my body was on auto pilot and my brain a million miles away until I heard footsteps coming down into the basement.

When I turned Sarah stood there with a fresh cup of coffee, she had frozen when she saw the look on my face. Sarah! The thought of her being there snapped me back to reality, her questions started flowing. I did my best to explain what was happening to her while trying as best as I could not to freak her out in the process, it was a total failure on that front. I didn’t exactly know much more than she did so what little comfort I could offer wasn’t worth a damn, it felt like about a week before her tears stopped falling but in reality only about 10 minutes then came the inevitable question:

Nate, what do we do? At least with that one I had some idea of how to move forward, I had been getting ready for something to happen for years, now I was about to see if I had wasted all of that time and money on prepping or if things would work like I had planned. First order of business was security. As I said before, in my opinion people are assholes and I have no doubt that it won’t take long before someone decides to take advantage of the situation for a little mayhem.

Every morning when I grab my watch, wallet, pocketknife, and keys, a holster gets slipped on my belt with a Glock 19x sitting in it at the 6 o’clock position of my belt set up for right hand draw there are 2 spare mags on the other side that give me 52 rounds of 9mm hand-loaded hollow point happiness at the ready. A quick glance over at Sarah reassured me that her 9mm Smith and Wesson Shield was on her left side (left handed people are weird) with 2 spare mags on the other. She had 22 rounds of 9mm, not as good as my round count but not bad either can’t expect her at 5’2’’ and 125 pounds to be carrying the same thing as my 6’3’’ 270 pound self.

That’s a good start … now it’s off to the gun cabinet ... out come the AR-15s both of them custom built by me, topped with Vortex Strikefire II red dot optics, and loaded with 62grain m855 green tip with plenty more pre-loaded mags at the ready, along with the AR-15s the gun cabinet yielded 2 sets of Safariland electronic ear plugs. Just turn them on, stick them in, and leave them there. An AR-15, most guns for that matter, will do some serious damage to your hearing, even if you are outdoors, let alone if you’re in the house.

I have never served or been in a firefight, what I have done is spent a lot of time and money seeking out quality training in the use of these weapons. I couldn’t say at this point whether I would run screaming at the first shots fired my way or whether I would rise to the occasion and get the job done (unfortunately I do know which now). What I can say is, at that particular moment, having them on me sure as hell made me feel a lot better.

Next order of business, gas generators are loud as hell! I had been saving up a few old car batteries out in the garage that were still in serviceable condition. Together with an inverter I could keep the ham radio powered and some of our devices charged without having to make so much noise, while Sarah killed the generator, I started moving them into the basement and setting it up. When I was out there I had also grabbed a solar panel and a trickle charger to help keep up the charge on the batteries.

Now here is a funny thing. After that was set up, I was walking through the house and saw that Sarah hadn’t opened up the curtains this morning. I was frozen for maybe 15 minutes trying to decide if it would be better to open them and be able to see if anyone was coming around or leave them closed to try using the out of sight out of mind theory. It’s the little things that in all my planning I hadn’t thought about that were now busy twisting my guts into knots with worry.

In the end I decided to leave them closed and just try to peak out every once in a while without being seen. One thing I was happy about is that Sarah had planted some Crown of Thorns plants directly under the windows around the house. They were fairly good sized but not so much as to obstruct my view, there were some damn big thorns on those things. Having them there will stop most people from sneaking up to the house by staying below the windows, if they were to try they would end up pricked and bleeding. It’s not like they would do serious damage but most people will go out of their way to avoid the pain, little deterrents like that can help a lot.

Off to the spare bedroom (read prepper room). I grabbed Sarah’s and my go-bags just in case and get them into the living-room, also kept in that room were 2 items that were the source of an argument between us a year ago when I ordered them, this gave me the first smile of the day. We had 2 sets of body armor from CATI Armor, each one in a MOLLE plate carrier. I had added 2 spare mags for our rifles, 1 spare mag for our handguns, a small flashlight, folding knife, IFAK (Individual First Aid Kit), and a radio with an earpiece.

Sarah just looked at me like I had grown a second head when I presented her with her set a year ago but at least one good thing today is that I can finally settle the idea in her mind that I had wasted my money buying something like body armor. Both sets went to sit with the go-bags. I decided to be the bigger man and just not mention it to her. Besides with all of the stress of today if I started acting like my normal smartass self, Sarah might just pistol whip me.

It was later that afternoon when we started hearing the first gunshots in the distance and Sarah slowly got up to slip the armor on without saying a word. I followed her example, the stuff is heavy but damn is it comforting to have on. I decided then that it was time to go grab both of our Blackhawk drop leg holsters and Glock 17 pistols to add to the load-out, a little much? Maybe it is but screw it; one of my favorite saying is I would rather have it and not need it than need it and not have it!

SHIT! I forgot about Brandon and Angela! OK so one of my best friends in the world and the only one that ever joined me on the road to preparedness is Brandon Segar along with his wife Angel. The COVID hysteria had gotten his ass in gear to finally be prepared. He started to train with me at the range along with getting his stockpiles of food, weapons, and ammo together fast. Down to the basement I went to fire the ham back up. Thank God that Brandon had gotten into ham radios after playing with mine last year or I have no idea how we would be able to keep in touch right now. When I keyed up the mic I was praying that he was near his receiver:

This is SVQ428 calling L2Z661 how copy? The response was quick and angry. SVQ428 this is L2Z661 it’s about time! I’ve been trying to raise you for an hour now. After a round of apologizing from me we got down to business and talked for a good 2 hours about what the hell was going on, it was from Brandon that I first heard the rumors that it had been the Chi-Coms who had toasted our grid. He had heard it from someone else who swore they got it from a top governmental official, now normally that would peak my bullshit meter but for once the rumors turned out to be spot on.

We spent the rest of the time trying to decide if we should bug out to a hunting property with a nice little A-frame cabin on it in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula near Marquette we had bought together a few years ago or try and ride it out at home. Normally we are both of the opinion that it is better to stay put than to bug out and I still believe that is true most of the time. Yeah … for future reference that idea goes out the window if you are living in a highly populated area when the power goes out for good, but in the first of what would be many mistakes we decided to try and ride it out to see if by some miracle the idiots in government could get their shit together enough to solve the problem.

I knew even then that it was wishful thinking and wishful thinking will get you killed but were only human. After that stupid decision we did make a couple of good ones, we both had very capable Toyota vehicles and we decided to get them loaded and ready for the chance we would have to bug out. We also decided to check in with each other every 4 hours, this then was to be the rest of my and Sarah’s day spent packing and repacking the Toyota Tundra so we could take as much as possible with us if the time came. In the end we got most everything that was important into the truck. All we would have to do would be grab the go-bags and head out. Unfortunately we would lose all of the food in the fridge and freezers but it’s not like I had enough fuel for the genny to last forever even running it only a few hours at a time.

Life over the next three days fell into a routine (as most things will with people) we ate, slept in shifts, peaked out the curtains WAY too much, kept in touch with Brandon and Angela, and tried to collect as much information as humanly possible. We had been hearing gunfire on and off the entire time but by some grace of God it had stayed off of our immediate streets. During one of my and Brandon’s marathon ham sessions we started hearing reports out of Washington. That is how we learned that that crazy bitch in the White House had recalled all of our servicemen and had stationed the lions’ share of them in and around D.C. she had only sent a token force out into the country to try and help the lowly peasant population she was supposed to be working for. Yes, I am bitter, what of it?) The only consolation I have about it is keeping that many armed men and women close to her ended up being a big mistake.

On the fourth day I went down to check in with Brandon but as soon as I flipped the power switch on the ham I started hearing him calling for me, the reports had been flooding in about a strange new sickness that was hitting first in the D.C. area and spreading from there like a brush fire. Violence and rioting were starting to break out, people just bludgeoning to death anything they could catch in some kind of crazed mania, D.C. by all accounts was in flames, that crazy bitch had been evacuated, I guess to Mount Weather I never did find out and I really don’t care.

 Brandon and I listened for hours to our D.C. area ham brethren until one by one they went off the air. We talked for a few more minutes and decided it was time to get the hell out of dodge, off to the cabin, high-ho Tundra, Away! We agreed I would head over to his place and we would leave from there, under normal circumstances it would take us about 5 and a half hours to get to the Mackinaw bridge with another 2 hour ride from there to the cabin, oh how easy it all sounded that day from the relative safety of the basement.

As I headed upstairs to get the ball rolling on the bug out I heard a knock at the door, Sarah came out from the back room, looking through the peephole I saw my next door neighbor Dan standing there. As I was reaching for the door handle to let him in I could see him looking off to his right, I decided to take a closer inspection through the window, what I saw stopped me cold and turned my blood to ice in my veins. Standing just out of sight of the peephole I could see his oldest boy Dan Jr pressed against the wall with a shotgun gripped tightly in his hands. I stepped away from the door and waived Sarah back as I drew my Glock from its drop-leg, at this point I was really regretting having left my AR leaning up against the desk in the basement where the ham radio sat, stupid stupid prepper. Instead of opening up I decided to yell out to him through the door.

What do you want Dan? Hey Nate, I was just wondering if you could spare some food. You know I have the kids and the grand-kids at my place, we’re getting close to running out man. Sorry Dan I got nothing to spare, we’re all in the same boat right now. Sarah and I are almost out of food for ourselves.

At that moment I didn’t give a crap about lying to him, if he had just come by without the hardware or back-up I would have told him that we were leaving and he could have all of the food I couldn’t take that was still in the fridge and freezers along with being able to use the big generator in the garage, but if he was gonna pull this crap, fuck him. When he yelled back at me it was obvious he was pretty desperate and now very pissed off.

Come on Nate don’t bullshit me. We been watching you for years taking all that food and other shit into your place, all we want is a little bit to get us by. You can’t just sit there and let my whole family starve to death you prick; I need that food for the kids so just open the fucking door. I don’t wanna have to break it down but I’m gonna do what I need to here.

One thing I always believed about prepping is that it would be great to be able to help others during bad times but if you go down