Deadzone: Surviving The End of The World

Chapter 1

The night was calm at the Cascadia Hydro Facility.

Caleb Cross sat at the main console, the hum of turbines steady beneath his boots. A mug of half-cold coffee rested by his hand. Nothing ever happened on the night shift. He liked it that way.

The clock on the wall showed twelve fifteen when the first flicker came.

The lights dimmed for a heartbeat, brightened, then died.

Every monitor went dark. The hum stopped. The whole building seemed to hold its breath.

Caleb looked at the control board. No response. He tried the backup switch. Nothing. He checked his phone. Dead. His watch too.

He stood in the sudden silence, hearing only the river outside.

A low vibration passed through the floor. It grew until the windows rattled. Then a blue light flashed somewhere below, followed by another and another. The smell of metal filled the air.

He walked to the window that looked down at the valley. The town lights were gone. The river glowed faintly, as if something alive moved inside it.

Caleb’s chest tightened. “What the hell…”

The vibration deepened. A sound like distant thunder rolled through the valley, but the sky was clear. Then, from far away, a single bright wave of blue light swept across the mountains and through the trees. Every animal sound stopped. The world fell still.

Rivermouth Clinic

Nurse Nora Reyes was closing a cut on a young man’s leg when the lights went out. The generator kicked once and died. Her phone screen stayed black.

She looked toward the hallway. The emergency signs flickered, showing shapes moving where no one should be.

“Hello?” she called.

Something answered from the dark. It sounded like breathing.

She backed toward the window. Outside, the streetlights sparked blue, one by one, until the whole street glowed like ice. Then the glass in front of her trembled. She thought she saw faces in the reflection, pale and wrong, before the light vanished.

Highway 16

Dylan Price’s truck coasted to a stop. Every gauge on the dash dropped to zero. The radio hissed. He climbed out, cursing softly, and saw deer flooding across the road, running from the valley.

Their eyes reflected blue in his headlights.

One of them stumbled. It didn’t get up. Then it twitched, twisted, and stood again on broken legs, moving toward the trees without sound. Dylan backed into his cab and locked the door. The air outside seemed to buzz, as if filled with static.

Maple Drive

Tom Lennon was helping his son set up a telescope on the porch when their lights flickered out. The stars above the ridge were bright, but something else shimmered between them, thin lines of blue crossing the sky like cracks in glass.

The boy pointed. “Dad, look at the river.”

The water glowed like fireflies under ice. Then came a soft knock on their door.

Tom stepped inside to check, but when he opened it, there was no one there.

A faint trail of footprints glowed on the front path, leading toward the woods.

Back at the Hydro Plant

Caleb grabbed a flashlight and went down the metal stairs to the turbine floor. The air felt heavy and cold. The blue light pulsed under the grate, rising through the cracks in the floor.

He crouched beside one of the control panels and pulled the cover loose. Inside, every wire was blackened, as if burned from the inside out.

Something moved in the corner. He turned the light.

A worker lay on the ground. Sam, the night guard. His eyes were open. His chest didn’t rise. Caleb hurried over, knelt beside him, and reached for a pulse.

Sam’s hand shot up and gripped his wrist.

Caleb froze.

The man’s eyes glowed faint blue. His mouth opened but no sound came out, only a faint hiss of air. Caleb yanked his arm free and stumbled back. The flashlight fell, rolled across the floor, and stopped against a steel beam.

When he looked up again, Sam was standing. His movements were slow, jerky, like a puppet pulled by invisible strings. The blue light ran through the veins in his neck.

Caleb backed toward the stairs. “Sam, stay back.”

The man didn’t stop. He walked straight into the beam of light. His skin looked gray and thin, like wax.

Caleb grabbed a metal wrench from the wall and swung it once.

The man fell but did not stay down. He began to rise again.

A sharp sound came from outside an echoing cry, part animal, part human. It carried through the valley and set every nerve in Caleb’s body on edge.

He ran up the stairs, heart pounding. The hallway lights flickered weakly, glowing blue for a second before dying again.

He reached the control room and looked through the wide window.

Below, the valley was waking. Blue sparks dotted the streets of Rivermouth like fire spreading through dry grass. Shadows moved between houses. From the forest came more cries, not only human this time. The shapes that ran there were wrong, too fast, too twisted.

Caleb turned to the emergency radio. It hissed with static, then a broken voice came through.

“…containment… Morana… do not approach… signal… spreading…”

The message cut off.

He looked down at his hands. They were shaking. Outside, the turbines began to turn by themselves, slow and grinding, even though the plant had no power.

The blue light from the river climbed higher, touching the sky.

Caleb pressed his forehead to the glass. He thought he could hear whispering in the hum of it all, like thousands of voices speaking at once in a language that didn’t belong to any human.

The whole valley glowed as if alive.

And somewhere deep beneath the plant, in the tunnels carved years ago, something answered.