Stage 3: A Post Apocalyptic Thriller Read Online Free Page B

retrieved another bottle from his pocket. And then another. And another. By the time they pulled up in front of his building, his pockets were empty and the floor of the cab was littered with tiny empty bottles. He paid the driver, took an elevator to the 16th floor and thanked whatever gods there be that he'd had the ride to himself. Once in his apartment, he bolted the door, drew the chain and released a breath he might have been holding for hours.
    Thank Christ! What a week. What a horrible, godawful shit-storm of a week. It was supposed to have been wonderful. When he'd booked the flight and the bungalow six months ago, he'd done so giggling like a school boy. Becks will love Thailand, he'd thought.  One full week of sand and surf and umbrella drinks and couples' massages. Who wouldn't love that?
    Yeah, it'd sounded great at the time, but he'd ended up going alone. All alone in a vacation paradise full of couples. Gay or straight, everyone was paired up. Everyone but him and one freaky looking dude with a 70's porn-stache and an eye for the young girls handing out towels at the pool. Everyone he passed by gave him the same look they gave to Porn-Stache;  a narrowing of the eye, a wrinkling of the nose and a barely-disguised scowl.
    "Thanks, Becks," he said, popping open a beer and draining half of it in a single swallow. 
    Despite the fact that it was barely morning and he'd already slept away half of the last 16 hours, he was suddenly exhausted. He carried the rest of the beer to the bathroom, dropped his sweaty clothes to the floor, swallowed a handful of aspirin and had a quick shower. Then he climbed into bed and tried to think of anything other than beaches and women and airplanes.
    It was pointless. As he lay there pondering that finite moment when his life began to spiral downward, his mind kept returning to the more recent fiasco, and one thought always rose to the fore; who the hell copes with nervous exhaustion by assaulting his rescuers? Crying, he could understand. Shutting down, okay. Not his cup of tea, but understandable. He could even be generous enough to explain cute little Katie's feral cat routine away by supposing that it might have been his fault for not identifying himself, and she'd acted out of fear. But half the planeload taking swings at one another? And biting? Where the hell did that get fun? Okay, sure, Power-Suit was blind and scared, but what bizarre path must the rush of adrenaline and cortisol have taken through his fucked up brain that chowing down on another man's face seemed like a perfectly acceptable response to the situation?
    The words of Manfred Mann suddenly started to rattle around in his brain.
    Blinded by the light, revved up like a deuce, another runner in the night……
    Lights. Lightning. The copilot mentioned lightning. Blue lightning, and the smell of ozone. Is that what blinded everyone? Mason knew that staring at the sun could cause eye damage, and watching a nuclear bomb go off or staring at an arc-welder would do it, too, or so he'd been told. But regular old lightning? Was that even possible? No, no way. If lightning caused blindness, there wouldn't be anyone left on the planet without a white cane.
    But what about blue lightning? Could lightning even be blue? Mason wracked his brain, but couldn't recall ever hearing about blue lightning. Lightning was all white, wasn't it? All of those screen-saver pictures he'd seen on-line with dramatic images of lightning flashing across the heavens; they were all white, right? If someone had ever caught a picture of blue lightning, he'd certainly never seen it.
    A side effect of the clouds, maybe. Was that possible? Mason's mind was many things, but first and foremost, it was logical, and he immediately chided himself. All lightning came from clouds, moron. Clouds don't change lightning, they create lightning. Still, he couldn't help but allow for one small caveat. What about a cloud that smelled vaguely of