The Blackout

Theo's clumsy attempt to fix the generator backfires, destroying vital supplies as the clinic plunges into a deadly freeze.

The silence after the shouting was worse. It had a texture, like wool packed in the ears. Theo stood in the doorway of the supply room, a roll of gauze clutched in his fist, and listened to the absence of sound. No sirens outside. No generators coughing. Just the low, almost subliminal hum of the overhead fluorescents and the wet, ragged breathing of the woman on Bed 4.

He walked back into the main ward. His boots left dark prints that faded almost instantly into the grimy tile. Each step felt like an admission. He approached the bed, keeping his eyes down. The camera was a dead weight in the inner pocket of his jacket, a cold rectangle pressing against his ribs. He could feel the memory card in his palm, its sharp corners digging into his skin.

Mina didn’t look at him as he knelt beside her. She held the fresh bandage, her fingers steady despite a tremor in her wrists that Theo saw only because he was looking for it. She took the gauze from his hand without a word, her touch cold and clinical. She worked quickly, her movements economical, folding and pressing until the bleeding slowed from a seep to a bead.

“Theo,” she said, her voice low, a rustle of dry leaves. She still didn’t look up.

He flinched. “Yeah.”

“Don’t apologize.” She finished taping the bandage. The patient’s eyes, wide and vacant, stared at the ceiling. “Words don’t clot blood. Get the cot back upright. And wipe the floor. The blood attracts vermin.”

He moved to the overturned cot. It was a simple metal frame, one leg bent from the fall. He squatted, getting a grip on the cold metal. His back protested, a sharp twinge from yesterday’s labor, from the running. He heaved. The cot scraped across the tile, loud in the quiet. He got it halfway, then had to shuffle around to get leverage for the other side. His breath hitched. A cough tickled his throat, dry and rasping. He swallowed it down, tasting copper.

“Please,” the woman on the bed whispered. Not to him. To the ceiling. To God. To nothing. “Please, the noise. Make it stop.”

There was no noise. Just the hum. Just the soft drip of condensation from the pipes overhead, a slow, metronomic count.

Theo got the cot up. It stood crooked, but it was a surface. He went to the janitor’s closet, found a rag stiff with grime, and returned to the puddle of blood. He knelt again, the ragged cotton cold against his fingers. He scrubbed. The red turned pink, then brown, smearing into the pattern of the floor. It was stubborn. He had to use his thumbnail to scrape a dried fleck from a grout line. He concentrated on the mechanical act, on the pressure of his finger against the abrasive tile, on the way the rag caught on a rough patch. Anything to avoid looking at Mina’s face.

He felt her gaze before he saw it. He glanced up from the floor. She was watching him now, her arms crossed. The anger from before was gone, burned out. What remained was something flatter, harder. A decision being finalized in the quiet architecture of her mind.

“It was a mistake,” he said, the words escaping before he could stop them. They sounded thin, useless. “I saw the light. The signal flare. I thought… I don’t know what I thought. That it was the story. That if I got it, it would mean something.”

“It did,” Mina said. “It meant Bed 4 got her head split open. It meant the Spire knows exactly where we are. It means the package from the river never arrived, because the runner saw the flare and went to ground. That was insulin for the diabetes ward. So, yes, Theo. It meant something.”

He went back to scrubbing. The rag was saturated with his failure. “I’m trying to fix it.”

“You can’t,” she said. “You can’t scrub this away. You can’t undo a camera shutter.” She walked away, toward the triage desk. She picked up a clipboard, the plastic making a sharp sound as she snapped it against her palm. “We need to secure the perimeter. Check the barricades on the south entry. Then inventory the food stores. We have to assume resupply is delayed. Possibly halted.”

He finished wiping the floor. The spot was cleaner than the surrounding tile, a pale rectangle that seemed to accuse him. He stood, his knees cracking. He felt the wetness of his own pants through the denim, a cold kiss on his thighs. “I’ll do it. The barricades.”

Mina looked at him, her eyes scanning him from head to toe. She noted the way he favored his left leg, the slight hunch of his shoulders against the chill that was beginning to creep into the room despite the heating. She was weighing him. Calculating utility versus liability.

“Fine,” she said. “Check the locks on the east door first. The one we used for the raid. Make sure it’s barred. Then check the south. Report back. Don’t engage. Don’t take photos. Don’t do anything but look.”

He nodded, turning toward the east corridor. He had taken two steps when the world ended.

It wasn’t a flicker. It wasn’t a brownout. One moment, the fluorescent lights above him cast their sickly green-white glow, illuminating the dust motes dancing in the beam. The next moment, they were gone. Not dimmed. Gone. The hum of the ventilation system, a constant companion for weeks, vanished instantly. The low whine of the medical monitors, the rhythmic beep of Bed 4’s pulse, the faint buzz of the electric kettle in the corner—all of it silenced in a single, absolute cut.

Total, impenetrable blackness.

For a second, nobody moved. The darkness was so complete it felt solid. A physical pressure against the eyes. The absence of sound was replaced by a high-pitched whine in Theo’s ears, the sound of his own blood rushing in the silence.

Then Bed 4 screamed. A raw, guttural sound of pure animal terror. It shattered the frozen moment.

Panic erupted. It wasn’t a unified shout. It was a cacophony of individual noises—the clatter of a metal tray hitting the floor, a child’s wail from the pediatric corner, the scrape of a cot being dragged, curses in multiple languages, the frantic scrabble of feet on tile. The air thickened with the heat of sudden movement, the smell of unwashed bodies and fear overwhelming the antiseptic tang.

“Theo!” Mina’s voice cut through the chaos, sharp as a scalpel. “Flashlight! In the triage desk! Top drawer!”

He was already moving, his hand outstretched, sweeping through the air where he knew the desk should be. His fingers hit the sharp corner of the wood, a starburst of pain in his knuckles. He fumbled for the drawer pull, his frostbitten fingertips lacking grip, slipping off the cold metal. He felt around the edge of the desk, his breath coming in short, sharp gasps. The cough bubbled in his chest, a hot, insistent pressure.

He found the drawer. Yanked it. It stuck. He yanked again, harder. It gave way with a screech, spilling pens and bandage scissors across the floor. He dove his hand inside, fingers brushing against soft fabric—gauze, bandages—and then the hard, cylindrical shape of the flashlight.

He pulled it out, his grip clumsy. He thumbed the switch.

A weak beam of yellow light stabbed the darkness. It shook violently in his hand. He swept it around the room, illuminating a scene of chaos. Patients were huddled under cots or against the stacks, their eyes wide and white in the glare. Mina was standing by the bed of Bed 4, trying to hold the woman down as she thrashed, her mouth open in a silent scream now that the initial shout was spent.

“Hold her!” Mina barked. “Theo, bring the light here!”

He took a step forward. His boot landed on a dropped pen. It skittered out from under him. His weight shifted, his bad ankle twisting. He flailed, trying to regain balance, and his hand slammed against the side of a heavy wooden shelf unit used for storing non-perishable supplies.

The flashlight flew from his grip. It spun through the air, the beam dancing wildly across the ceiling, walls, and upturned faces. It hit the floor with a clatter and rolled, its metallic casing scraping against the tile. It rolled in a perfect, horrible line, wobbling slightly, coming to rest under the bottom shelf of the unit, wedged against the wall.

It cast a useless, horizontal beam at the floorboards, illuminating a square foot of dust bunnies and a cracked tile. The rest of the ward plunged back into near-darkness, the emergency exit signs dead, the only light now that weak, pathetic glow from beneath the shelf.

Theo stood frozen, staring at the spot where the light had vanished. The crowd of patients, a shapeless mass of fear, turned their heads toward him. He could feel their stares, even in the dark. He wasn’t a rescuer. He was a fool who had just dropped the only light in a building that had lost power.

“Theo,” Mina said. Her voice was dangerously calm. “Get the light.”

He dropped to his knees. The impact jarred his bones. He crawled toward the shelf, his hands patting the floor in front of him. He encountered something soft and yielding—a rolled blanket—and pushed it aside. He reached the shelf. The wood was cold, old, and smelled of mildew. He peered into the gap. The flashlight’s beam pointed straight at the wall, its halo barely reaching the edges of the darkness.

He stretched his arm under. The shelving unit was heavy, squat. His shoulder pressed against the cold metal leg of the frame. His fingers brushed the cylindrical casing. It was slick with condensation or maybe just the cold of the room. He pinched it, trying to get a grip. It slipped. He pinched again, his fingernails scraping the anodized aluminum. He got a hold on the textured ridges at the head and tried to pull.

It was wedged. The lens was jammed against the wall. He tugged, his arm muscles straining. He felt a stitch in his side, a sharp, burning sensation. He coughed, a dry, hacking sound that shook his whole body. The effort forced him to release his grip. The flashlight remained, casting its dim glow at the floorboards.

He lay on the cold tile, his cheek pressed against the grit, breathing in the dust. He could hear the whimpering of the child, the ragged breath of Bed 4. He could hear Mina moving in the dark, the rustle of her clothing, the soft, firm murmur of her voice as she spoke to the patient.

“I can’t get it,” he called out, his voice muffled by the floor. “It’s stuck.”

There was a pause. Then, “Then we move. Come here. All of you, to the center of the room. Away from the walls. Form a circle. Hands on shoulders. Do not let go.”

Theo pushed himself up. He used the shelf for support, the wood groaning under his weight. He felt his way back toward the sound of Mina’s voice, his hand outstretched, his feet shuffling slowly. He bumped into a cot, his shin connecting with the metal frame. Pain bloomed, hot and sharp. He swallowed the yelp, biting his lip. He kept moving.

He found Mina by touch. His hand encountered her shoulder, tense and rigid. He stepped into the circle, putting his hand on the shoulder of the person in front of him—a bony, trembling shoulder. The person in front of him placed a hand on his back. They stood in a ragged human chain in the absolute dark, the only light a distant, useless glow from the flashlight trapped under the shelf.

“The generator,” Mina said into the dark. Her voice was calm, professional, but closer to panic than he’d ever heard it. “The basement. We have to get it running. Theo, with me. Everyone else, stay put. Do not move. Do not talk unless you have to.”

She broke the chain, finding his arm in the dark. Her grip was iron. “Let’s go.”

They moved toward the service door that led to the basement. The path was treacherous in the dark. Every step was a risk. Theo kept his free hand out, sweeping the air, feeling for the edge of a desk, the corner of a shelf. He remembered the layout of the clinic by heart, but the darkness warped it, made it alien. The door, when he finally felt its cold metal surface, was a relief. The handle was a lever. He pressed down. It was unlocked. They had never bothered locking it before. Why would they?

He pushed the door open. A draft of colder air hit them, smelling of concrete, damp earth, and something else—a sharp, chemical scent. Detergent or solvents. The utility room was below, accessed by a steep set of concrete stairs. The stairs were illuminated by a single, battery-powered emergency bulb mounted on the wall, its weak, sickly yellow glow barely reaching the first few steps.

Mina went first, her feet sure on the steps. Theo followed, his hand still on her shoulder for guidance. The temperature dropped noticeably with each step down. The air in the basement was frigid, the cold seeping through the cracks in the foundation. It bit through his denim, through his damp skin, and settled deep in his bones.

They reached the bottom. The emergency bulb cast long, dancing shadows. The room was small, a concrete box about twelve feet square. In the center sat the diesel generator: a hulking, greasy black beast, connected by thick cables to a junction box on the wall. The air reeked of unburnt diesel fuel—a sweet, acrid odor that made Theo’s nostrils burn—and something else. An oily, metallic tang that seemed to amplify the cold.

“The Spire didn’t just cut the power,” Mina said, her voice echoing slightly in the concrete chamber. She was looking at the steam pipes that ran along the ceiling. A faint, milky condensation was forming on the metal. “They disabled the district heating. We’re on backup heating for the mains, but with no power, the thermostats are dead. The steam flow has stopped.”

She moved to the generator. It was a diesel model, an old Caterpillar workhorse from the pre-embargo days. They ran it for three hours a week to keep the batteries charged and the engine lubricated. Theo was supposed to check the oil every Friday. He remembered the last time he’d done it. It had been three weeks ago. The memory was a cold pit in his stomach.

“Get the crank,” Mina ordered, pointing to a long, iron bar leaning against the wall. “It’s manual start. No battery, no electric ignition.”

Theo grabbed the bar. It was heavy, the iron cold enough to burn through his thin gloves. He positioned himself at the front of the generator, where a large, flywheel-like crank mechanism was mounted. It was a wheel with a series of grooves for the bar to lock into. He slotted the bar into the groove, then heaved. The wheel turned a few inches with a groan of protest. He let it spin back, then heaved again, putting his whole weight into it.

His muscles strained. His back, already sore, screamed in protest. The bar was slick with grease. His grip slipped. The bar clanged against the metal housing. He reset, gritting his teeth. He pulled. This time, the wheel turned, a slow, grinding rotation. The engine coughed once, a puff of black smoke from the exhaust pipe that hung in the frigid air.

“It’s catching!” Mina said, her voice tight with hope. “Again. Harder!”

Theo repositioned. He took a breath, his chest rattling. He pulled. The wheel turned. He pushed it, using the bar as a lever, his arms burning. The engine coughed again, louder this time. A sputter. Another. It sounded like it was trying to wake up from a long, cold sleep.

Then, a cough started in Theo’s chest. It began as a tickle, then bloomed into a full, convulsive fit. He doubled over, the bar slipping from his grasp. He coughed, hacking and gasping, his throat burning. He tried to breathe through the spasm, but the air was cold and thin, laden with diesel fumes. The coughing made his eyes water and his chest ache with a deep, bruising pain.

“Damn it, Theo!” Mina shouted, moving to his side, but she didn’t touch him. She watched him, helpless. “Breathe. Breathe slow.”

He couldn’t. The coughing fit lasted a full minute, leaving him wheezing, his body trembling. He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. His lungs felt tight, seared.

“I’m… I’m okay,” he rasped. “Give me the bar.”

Mina retrieved the iron bar and handed it to him. Her face was pale in the yellow light, her eyes wide with a dawning, cold terror. She knew the oil levels were low. She knew the filters hadn’t been changed in over a month. She was calculating the odds, and they were not good.

Theo slotted the bar. He ignored the tremor in his hands. He pulled. He poured every ounce of his remaining strength into the motion. His back muscles locked, sending a blinding spike of pain down his leg. He bit down on his tongue, tasting blood. He pulled, and pulled.

The engine roared.

It didn’t sputter. It didn’t cough. It caught with a deep, guttural growl that filled the small room, vibrating through the concrete floor. The heavy smell of diesel was replaced by the sharp, tangy scent of burning fuel. The single bulb on the wall flickered, then seemed to glow a little brighter.

A hysterical laugh bubbled up in Theo’s throat. “It’s running! Mina, it’s running!”

She was already moving, her head tilted, listening. “The steam pipes. The heating. We have to see if the thermostat kicks in.”

But the victory was short-lived. As Theo let go of the bar, the engine’s rhythm changed. The steady *chug-chug-chug* began to stagger. A new, high-pitched whine joined the mechanical roar. It was the sound of metal grinding on metal, a sound of tearing.

“Shut it off!” Mina screamed. “Theo, pull the kill switch!”

He fumbled for the switch on the side of the generator, a large red lever. His hand was shaking so violently he missed it twice before his palm slapped down on it. He pulled.

The engine died with a final, violent shudder. The silence that followed was deafening, broken only by a faint hissing sound. It took Theo a second to place it. A pressurized release of fluid.

A dark, viscous liquid began to weep from a seam in the engine block, just below the exhaust manifold. It was black, glistening in the weak light. A gasket had blown. The pressure of the cold start, combined with worn seals, had given way.

Theo stared at the spreading pool of oil on the concrete floor. The smell of burnt metal and hot oil joined the existing scent of diesel. It was mundane. It was pathetic. It was entirely, completely his fault. He hadn’t checked the oil. He had been too busy watching the flare, too focused on a phantom story.

“Gasket,” Mina said, her voice flat. She knelt beside the pool, her finger touching the edge of the warm liquid. “We have spares. But we need a mechanic. We need tools. We need…” She trailed off. The list of what they needed was a list of impossibilities. It was a list of a different world.

“We have the tools,” Theo said, his voice hoarse. “Down here. In the red box. We can…”

He stopped. He heard a new sound over the fading hiss of the engine.

It was a crackling. A sharp, ticking noise coming from above. It was in the pipes. The steam pipes that ran along the ceiling, carrying condensation water.

A rapid, crystalline snapping sound echoed through the basement. *Cra-cra-crack.*

“The water,” Mina whispered, looking up. The temperature in the room was plummeting. Without the heating, without the constant circulation of warm air, the basement was returning to the ambient freeze of the winter night. “The pipes. The overhead mains for the fire suppression system. The water inside is freezing.”

Another crack, louder this time, followed by a groan of stressed metal. A section of pipe near the corner of the room bulged, then split. Not a clean break, but a jagged fissure.

Icy, black sludge-water didn’t spray; it poured. It gushed in a thick, steady stream, hitting the concrete floor with a splat. The water was mixed with years of sediment from the pipes, rust, and chemical residue from the suppression system’s foam tanks. It was the color of used motor oil, cold as death.

It flowed directly into the storage quadrant. The quadrant where they kept the non-perishable medical supplies. Boxes of saline bags, antibiotics, sterile gauze, bandages—all stacked on wooden pallets to keep them off the damp floor.

Mina saw it first. She let out a sound that was part scream, part sob. “The antibiotics! The sterile supplies! They’re in cardboard boxes!”

She was right. They had run out of shelf space weeks ago. The antibiotics—the precious, scavenged, hard-won vials of penicillin, amoxicillin, ciprofloxacin—were packed in cardboard boxes on the floor. Temporary storage. A solution that had just become fatal.

She didn’t give an order. She just moved. A white blur of motion in the yellow light. She scrambled toward the sludge, her boots splashing in the rising stream. The water was already an inch deep, spreading across the floor.

Theo stood paralyzed for a heartbeat, watching the dark water engulf the bottom of the first box. The cardboard darkened instantly, the edges curling inward. The weight of the water would crush the boxes. The contamination would ruin the contents. Months of work, lives dependent on those vials, all dissolving in black water.

He snapped into motion, a clumsy, frantic lurch. He saw a stack of IV fluid bags, large, rectangular plastic packets, and grabbed the top one. It was heavy, sloshing with its contents. He turned toward the exit, then slipped.

His boot hit a patch of slick oil from the blown gasket. His feet flew out from under him. He went down hard, his hip smashing into the concrete. The IV bag was torn from his grip. It flew through the air and shattered against the edge of the metal shelving unit, exploding in a shower of clear fluid and shards of plastic. The sterile water mixed with the sludge, rendering it useless.

He gasped, the air knocked from his lungs. He tried to stand, his hands and knees slipping in the icy muck. He pushed himself up, soaked from the waist down, his clothes clinging to his skin, frozen stiff already.

He turned, disoriented, and stumbled right into Mina. She was carrying a cardboard box full of bandages, her arms wrapped around it, trying to keep it above the rising water. He hit her, his shoulder driving into her side. The box jolted from her grip. It didn’t fall cleanly; it tilted, spilling a cascade of individually wrapped gauze rolls and sterile pads into the black water at her feet.

She didn’t look at him. She didn’t yell. She just stared at the floating, soiled bandages. Her shoulders slumped. The energy drained from her, leaving a hollow, shivering shape in the dark room.

“We’re done,” she said, her voice a flat line. She turned and walked toward the stairs, not looking back. “We’re leaving. Now.”

Theo looked around the room. The water was now four inches deep, covering the pallets. The cardboard boxes were dark, swollen shapes. The smell of mud, rust, and cold water filled his nose. He followed her, his legs heavy with cold and defeat. His back screamed with every step. He didn’t grab anything else. There was nothing left to save.

They climbed the stairs in silence, the sound of their dripping clothes echoing in the stairwell. The door to the clinic ward was open. The darkness in the ward was absolute. The weak beam from the flashlight under the shelf was still there, a lonely, futile glow.

No one was in the circle. The patients were scattered, huddled in corners, against the stacks, wherever they could find some semblance of shelter from the biting cold that was now seeping into the room. The air was noticeably colder than when they had left. The groan of the building’s steel skeleton contracting in the rapidly dropping temperature was audible now—a low, metallic creak that ran through the floors and walls.

A crackle came from the desk. A small, battery-powered emergency radio, usually kept on the charger, lay on its side. It was a relic, bulky and old, but it had its own power source. A green LED flickered to life on its dial. Static hissed from the speaker, then a voice cut through, distorted by interference but unmistakable.

It was Owen Valen. His voice was ragged, breathless, punctuated by the sound of his own wheezing coughs.

“—repeat, this is Owen Valen, broadcasting from Node Seven. To all units in the Zone, to the clinic, to anyone listening… The Spire… they’ve initiated Protocol Sigma. They’re calling it ‘Thermal Sterilization.’ This isn’t a siege. This is… this is an extermination. They’re not just cutting power. They’re draining the district steam mains. They’re turning the whole damn zone into a refrigerator. All automated turrets are set to fire on thermal signatures above minus five Celsius. The airlocks… they’re sealed. No way in. No way out. God, the sky… the drones are just sitting in the air, waiting for warmth… The cold… it’s the weapon. It’s the whole weapon. Do you copy, Library? Get to a heated safe house if you can. Any heat. Burn the books. Burn the damn building down. Just… just stay warm. Owen out.”

The radio hissed, then died. The green LED blinked twice and went dark.

Silence.

Theo looked at the stacks, at the towering walls of books that filled the atrium. The cold was a living thing now, flowing through the broken window he’d opened earlier, through the cracks in the doors, from the very walls themselves. He could see his breath in the air, a faint white cloud in the slivers of light from the dying flashlight.

He walked to the center of the atrium, where a single, thick wool blanket lay discarded on the floor. He picked it up. It was damp, gritty with floor dirt, but it was heavy. He sat down on the cold tile, his back against the leg of a heavy oak table. He spread the blanket over his lap.

Mina appeared from the shadows. She didn’t speak. She sat beside him, her body radiating a faint, desperate heat. She pulled one corner of the blanket over her own legs, her shoulder pressing against his. It wasn’t comfort. It was biology. A shared resource against the dying of the world.

Theo opened his mouth. He wanted to say something. Something reassuring. *We’ll find a way. We’ll start the fire. We’ll get a generator fixed.* But the cold was too deep. It had settled in his jaw, in his teeth. A shiver started in his chest and radiated outward, a violent, uncontrollable tremor.

His teeth began to chatter, a rapid, clicking rhythm against the silence. He tried to speak, to force the words past the chattering, but all that came out was a soft, helpless clacking sound. He pressed his lips together, trying to stop it, but the tremor was in his bones now, a cold, mechanical violence shaking him apart from the inside. He looked at Mina, his eyes wide and helpless in the gloom, and could say nothing at all.