Chapter 1

Hi, my name is Joshua, but that should be no surprise at this point. Don’t most of the characters in these stories have a pretty average name? Joe? Alex? Tim? James? Tony? Charles? Yeah, I’m pretty average. Always have been. Back before this began, I was average too. 5’10” tall, 144 lbs, not really muscular. 35, and living with a wife ... no kids... 3 fish, 2 dogs, and 3 cats ... Dogs and cats were rescued animals. I worked from home, for a tech support firm. You’d call the cable company for your internet going out, and I’d be the guy to fix it. I used to think I was pretty good at my job until it happened. That night.

Aconite, is a plant, a poison, that’s untraceable. Meaning it’s hard to prove that you used it. No, I’m not sadistic and I had to look up more than once in old books what it was called. A few of us still had those, books, I mean ... Why does that matter?

Well, to tell the truth, nothing mattered at first. It was a normal Wednesday night. I lived in Las Vegas, Nevada at the time. I was working the overnight shift because I had swapped with one of my co-workers, who wanted to be there when his wife gave birth to their third child. So there I was, taking calls.

“Thank you for calling Cable Communications, my name is Joshua, how may I help you tonight?” I asked.

“My cable and internet are down and I want to know why.” The customer said.

Well, their phone was up. That was good ... then static...

“Hello?” I said into my headset before I noticed ... I was out of the internet too. I was on Fiber Optic. Weird.

I grabbed my wife’s cell phone as I tried to call into the work attendance line. My phone was dead. Or at least it wasn’t dialing. There was nothing. No ring, no act of going through. I forced it to shut down and I turned it on again as I heard a crash.

A Crash? That was odd.

I looked over at the time. It was only a couple minutes past midnight. I took off my headset and headed for the front door to investigate the crash. As I was doing so, I dialed 911 on the phone. Still nothing. I didn’t have a landline, but as I stepped outside to see the crash, I saw my neighbor from across the street stumble and fall to the ground out of his car. He was around 50 years old, and I hadn’t really talked to him. I ran up to him to check on him as he gasped for breath as I heard over his radio some shocking news.

“If you’re outside head indoors. Accidents and fires are breaking out everywhere, people are dying in the street from unknown circumstances. Internet, cable, and phones are down. This is an emergency alert.” The radio said.