2021 (12 page)

‘I want to call the whole thing off!’ Raines immediately told him.

‘OK
, but there are no refunds in this business’ replied Beaks, shrewdly failing to tell Raines he had already tried to kill Tom, but had failed in his attempt.

‘What about the other ha
lf of your money?’ asked Raines.

‘Have it sent
to the same place’ Beaks informed him.

Raines immediately got onto
Cardinal Greco and he in turn informed Cardinal Moretti.

‘Thank the Saints
he hadn’t gone through with anything’ smiled Cardinal Moretti in relief when he finally heard the news.

*

Tom, Alec, and Mark meanwhile, were
now all left just walking to work.

‘I think we’re safe now’ commented Tom as they walked along
the pavement.

‘Are you sure
? As I don’t want to get shot at again?’ queried Alec.

‘No,
the gunman must be miles from here by now, with all these police cars chasing around’ commented Mark as he watched them racing passed them.

‘See what you get if you don’t pay f
or your road tax, they now shoot at you, it’s a new government policy’ joked Alec.

‘That’s not even funny’ commented Mark
. ‘I’ve just been shot at and my car has been completely totalled!’

‘No, I’m sorry, Mark, I’m just nervous still, joking is my way of coping’ explained Alec.

‘Well find another way
, because you’re bloody well pissing me off!’ commented Mark angrily. ‘What is it with you two anyway? Clearly someone has got it in for you?’ Mark questioned.

‘Seriously, Ma
rk, we’ve no idea’ replied Tom. Then as he watched another police car speed passed them he pondered ‘should we go to the police do you think?’

‘Why, what are we going to tell them?’ replied Mark.

‘It could
probably help with your insurance claim though’ replied Tom ‘as it would then make it ‘official’ that your car got shot at.’

‘Yeah, you’re right,
why I never thought of that’ Mark nodded.

So, the ne
xt police car they saw, they hailed down and told the police officers their entire story.

Some five hours later
, after waiting with what looked like everyone in the entire area in the very busy and noisy police station, they were finally interviewed and then given a lift home in a police car.

‘Can you tell me what is happening with my car?’
Mark asked the policeman who was driving them home.

‘I’m sorry, m
ate, we’ve had to impound it as evidence’ he replied.

‘Why
do they want to impound it?’ puzzled Mark.

‘Because it may still hold some bullets that can at least tell us what weapons
the gunman used’ explained the policeman.

‘You might as well have this one then’ commented To
m, casually passing the policeman the bullet he had dug out of the telephone junction box ‘I dug it out with my keys’ he explained.

‘Oh, thanks’ smiled the policeman
looking surprised.

‘Well at lea
st we all got a lift home’ commented Alec as they all sat in the back of the police car.

‘I can think of a better way to get a day off work though’ commented Tom.

‘We’ll all have to get the bus to work
from now on’ groaned Mark looking thoroughly miserable.

‘Still, you can claim
on your insurance’ commented Alec cheerfully.

‘Well not according to a guy I got talking to in the police station’ replied Mark looking quite fed up ‘he says he phoned his insurance company and they said we aren’t covered for gun shot damage.’

‘Oh’ both Tom and Alec commented together.

‘That’s bloody typical that is!’ moaned Mark.

‘Weren’t you the guy who ended up over
the water hydrant the fire brigade were working on?’ asked the policeman driving them home as he overheard their conversation.

‘Yes’ replied Mark
curiously.

‘Then you can claim a
‘write off’ due to water damage’ the policeman smiled.

‘Really?’ smil
ed Mark ‘no, but it was my fault I landed over the hydrant’ he admitted.

‘Yes, but I think
trying to escape from a nut case shooting bullets at you is just about as good an excuse as it gets!’ laughed the policeman.

‘Yeah, I guess so’ smiled Mark
, now looking happy again as they all looked at each other and laughed.

‘Thanks’ he told the policeman.

‘Don’t mention it’ smiled the policeman ‘all part of the service’ he laughed.

Later that night
, Alec went round Tom’s house.

‘Who on earth would be shooting at us, Tom?’ he questioned.

‘I don’t know, Alec, it’s just mad
’ replied Tom just shaking his head.

Of course, the police could find no trace of the gunman. He had cleverly picked a spot where there were no secu
rity cameras and had quickly dismantled and packed up his weapons and was well on his way before the police’s special Armed Response Unit had even arrived on the scene.

4
^th
January 2021

California, USA.

T
he evening of 4
^th
January 2021 saw hundreds of people take to the hills of California after numerous headlines within the internet community reported seeing UFO’s flying over the night sky there.

The Californian police had themselves received dozens of reported sightings.

A spokesman for the American Space Agency NASA
however, reported no evidence of anything from any of their own sensitive monitoring equipment or space satellites. A sentiment also backed up by the military, the international Space Station and numerous space observatories worldwide.

The California
n police were quite used to what they termed as ‘crank’ callers reporting seeing UFO’s or sightings or even abductions by space aliens in their area and so they took little notice of them anymore.

They blamed social networking sites for the increase in reported sightings that had led to often hundreds of people gathering together in an attempt to see such things.

The resulting rather dodgy looking videos later posted on the internet always proved far less than convincing and these proved no different on this occasion either.

In Great Britain
, the usual BBC evening news had a feature on the apparent reported UFO sightings over California as a light hearted article to finish their otherwise rather serious news program.

‘It could o
nly happen in America!’ commented a smiling BBC news reader as he was seen to crack a joke with his female colleague as he finally shuffled up his papers at the very end of the program.

One sci
entist, a professor from Yale University however, argued that these particular sightings should be taken more seriously.

His name was Professor Whineberg and
he was a well respected German scientist in astrophysics who had worked occasionally as an advisor with the space agency NASA. He suggested that some of the witness descriptions seemed to ring true.

‘Many of the witnesses of this strange phenomenon have described seeing a bright circular light that flattens more into an egg shape upon reaching a lower altitude.

‘
This would be consistent with an object changing its shape upon entering our atmosphere and being subjected to the strong gravitational forces of Earth’ he explained.

Of course, he was
‘rubbished’ in the press with them all showing pictures of little green men instead.

When questioned about the professor’s statement
, a spokes person for NASA simply reiterated that if anything were there they would have picked it up on their sensitive monitoring equipment.

UFO sightings in the California area however, kept on increasing just the same.

*

A
t work one day as they enjoyed their tea break Alec read another article about the UFO sightings out aloud to Tom and Mark and they all laughed about them.

‘They’re all completely bonkers in America aren’t they
?’ laughed Alec as they all chuckled away over their tea and sandwiches.

Day One:

7
^th
January 2021

California, U.S.A.

O
n the evening of the 7
^th
January 2021 all the lights in the California State area suddenly went out in a power cut of previously unseen and unprecedented proportions. The lights all went out in people’s houses, shopping centres, hospitals, restaurants and also all the street lighting.

Added to this,
very soon afterwards telephone lines stopped working, mobile phone boxes stopped mobile phones from working, and everyone’s television and even their internet suddenly went down too.

It was the single bigges
t power cut in the Californian State’s history and they had a history of power cuts, but nothing even remotely on this kind of scale before.

As the
power cut had happened in late evening, widespread looting had broken out as people soon discovered how burglar alarms and electronic locking systems no longer worked, and even CCTV systems had stopped working too.

People coped as they always do in these emergency situations by using electric torches
, or candles in their houses, and many important places such as hospitals had back up generators for just this kind of emergency situation anyway.

Then though, things began
to turn ominous when emergency back up generators then stopped working themselves as engineers quickly checked them for fuel and found them to be fully topped up and the units themselves to be in full working order.

O
ut on the roads now, cars, trucks, buses stopped working and even trains all ground to a halt too and they just wouldn’t restart again.

Then
all
their lights went out!

Finally,
even electric torches themselves now inexplicably wouldn’t work either, until eventually even candles just flickered out and couldn’t be rekindled again.

Many people dived for gas appliances
, but then they realised there was no way they could light the gas.

It was as if flame and fire in the California area was suddenly a thing that no longer existed anymore.

T
he true fallibility and frailty of the human state suddenly became frighteningly apparent and very real now.

Suddenly the air was
filled with people just screaming in terror as they were faced with complete pitch darkness for the very first time in ever their lives!

Even the looters cried
out in terror and just dropped all the items they had seized as they just stumbled around in the pitch darkness like blind men, their electric torches all failing to work.

Face
d with a world they now could now no longer see, people just felt their way around to find each other, then they just huddled together in the pitch darkness.

All of a sudden
, an impact tremor was felt all around them as the ground itself shook violently!

People found themselves unable to even see their own hand in front of their face it was now so dark
and now even outside there was no light from any stars or even from the moon.

The electricity stations supplying
the California area were at a complete loss as to what exactly had caused such a catastrophic event.

Power stations and electric company staff
outside the affected area were now frantically running around trying to discover the source of this massive power failure. Nothing quite like it had
ever
been witnessed before and they were completely baffled as to exactly what had caused it.