blacks out office

Top dragged Bunny to his feet and they ran for the elevator, but when the doors were halfway open they suddenly stopped. The lights went out, inside the car and in the hall. In fact the whole building seemed to go strangely still despite the water pulsing from the sprinklers. Then they died, too.

“Stairs,” yelled Top and they blundered through the smoke to a crash-door and into a stairwell. It was utterly black. Even the battery-operated emergency lights were dark. Far below they could hear the clatter of footsteps.

“Give a light,” growled Top, but Bunny already had his powerful little penlight out. He slapped it into the clip on the underside of his gun. But the light did not flash on. There was nothing, not even the faintest glow. They stood for a moment, confused and disturbed, lit only by the trembling firelight behind them. The stairwell was like the mouth of a dragon, black and deep and treacherous.

Bunny leaned one hand on the rail. “We go down there and he’s waiting…”

No need to finish it.

“How’d he kill all the damn lights?” asked Top. “Don’t make no sense.”

They saw a brief flash of daylight at the very bottom as the killer broke from the fire tower.

“Call it, Top,” said Bunny.

If they had been dressed for combat they would have both been carrying nonelectric chemical flares. Below them the door swung shut and the stairwell was immediately plunged into total darkness.

“Call it in,” said Top. “Let’s get a BOLO out on this son of a bitch. And we need the fire department.”

But, of course, their cell phones and earbuds were as dead as the lights.

-Kill Switch pg. 275-276, Kindle Edition.