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The protective cocoon, for want of a better term for it, that sat by the Chevron popped open soundlessly dropping the occupant to the ground. Had anyone actually been looking at that moment they would have seen something that looked somewhat like a dragon but with just two legs and a set of wings. In a moment it had looked around and launched itself up into the night sky and out of sight.

The dozen or more cocoon that were in the greenbelt over the I90 tunnel opened at the same instant. There were a few people looking in the right direction. Gathered together their testimony would indicate that an assortment of strange creatures were revealed.

A lizardman, two legged wolves some thought of as werewolf, but were not, one individual that fit the typical description of a troll, a pair of small lizard like creatures about half the size of the lizardman all scampered off the first chance they got.

Others stayed. These included a centaur the size of a pony, two raccoons that stood on two legs much like a popular recent movie character, and an assortment of other half animal half human figures that all came together around the centaur as if in awe of the half horse.

Around the Settle Tacoma area similar appearances were likewise witnessed. The rest of western Washington was no exception, as was the rest of the world.

There were also pockets of calm where generators were at work taking the first steps in bringing the world back to a technological level everyone had enjoyed and two days prior equally taken for granted.

Richard Dorsey was one such laboring to pump life back into the electrical grid since the beginning. He had by necessity started small, but it was a vital effort. He lived two blocks from Everett's Providence Hospital and when everything went down he fired up his own pull start generator. It wasn't fifteen minutes before he understood the magnitude of the emergency. It just took a look at his dead phone and laptop and a quick run through similarly belly up flashlights and a large number of lifeless batteries.

Dorsey knew the hospital had its own generator went through his mind, but he had done a good deal of research on various generators before buying. The big generators were for the most part battery started. It was a simple connect the dots to understand that the battery they relied on would be as dead as everything else in his house. Being an upstanding citizen and as good samaritan as was possible he shut his genny down and loaded it up an a wheelbarrow. He also slipped his .22 into a waistband, he may have been a little too altruistic at times but he was nobody's fool.

They saw him coming. One of the security people came out and escorted him around the block to the generator shed. Their own maintenance team did the work and in five minutes had jury-rigged his pull-start generator to their generator's battery. Less than two minutes of a full power charge was enough to kick over the industrial size generator and the hospital was back in business.

Richard's exemplary example was repeated and copied all across North America. There were other examples for South America, Europe, Asia, Africa and points east as well as west. Pockets all across the globe stumbled back to a semblance of twenty-first century life, but many other places failed to find the kickstart. In many cases time was an issue.

As we've seen in Seattle chaos takes root quickly and efficiently. Riots looting and the ever present and persistent mob mentality takes a toll. Infrastructures get damaged, connections broken, gaps widen and the vicious circle grows.

The very infrastructure of power generation in the twenty first century is self dependent on having power in the first place. When the event took place, and zeroed out all the batteries it took out everything. Starting up everything but Solar and Wind took a good deal of time. Even hydro-electric has a need of outside power to restart.

Oh yes, speaking of that. One would think hydro-electric would have been resistant to the zero-out effect, and under normal conditions one might be correct. The event took everyone by surprise, so when everything else dropped off-line the H-E plants tried to take up the slack. Over-demand soon caused safety shutdowns to prevent damage to the generators. In short due to the complexity of the national, and to some degree international power grid everything went dark.

By mid-day of day two the pockets of near normalcy would grow, pushing back against the dark almost one small neighborhood at a time. It was a relief for a lucky few, but for many more it was another day of struggle, but there was hope. The hopeful sound of portable generators was spreading. Then again so was the continuing insidious damage.

As for the newly minted creatures never before seen on this world, the sight just added to the chaos. Rumors and stories of once mythic creatures and tales of encounters the likes of which that were normally scoffed at had to be honestly evaluated in light of the actual creature being on hand to testify to the stories veracity.

A whole new day was dawning and as the old song said lyric advised, it was time to get ready.