by Mike Kraus
After another hour of walking, crawling and maneuvering through the piping, it gradually leveled out, though Leonard could see that the path ahead had completely caved in. Frustration began to set in, but he ventured forward and began to climb up the pile of concrete and dirt, his headlamp cutting meekly through the swirling dust, a sign that the battery was almost drained. Leonard cursed, wishing he had brought his spare battery pack with him instead of just a spare headlamp. If this one gave out, he'd only have a few hours left on his second lamp, and then he would be stuck without a single source of light. As he pulled himself to the top of the pipe, Leonard's frustration changed into elation, and he swore once more, this time in glee at the sight ahead. "Shit, yes! The processing station!" The echo of his cry carried across the wide space that had been carved into the dirt and solid rock under the edge of the island. While it had been years since he had last set eyes on the place, he still remembered that there was a maintenance stairwell on the opposite side of the station that led straight to the surface. With any luck, it would still be intact and he’d finally be out of this Godforsaken place.
Though close to the surface, the processing station chamber had sustained only minor damage, most likely as a result of the large quantity of reinforcement that had gone into its construction. Unlike other parts of the underground system, the processing stations were some of the few places that were properly designed and built to withstand major catastrophes. Though the designers had never envisioned the type of destruction that had rained down from the heavens in the last twenty-four hours, the station had survived well enough. The ceiling and walls had sustained only minor damage and it looked like a good quarter of the emergency lights were still functioning, providing just enough light to make out vague shapes in the darkness.
Leonard crawled to the edge of the pipe and jumped down, landing on a catwalk that ran the length of the station some twenty-five feet above the ground. Thousands of pipes ranging in size from a few inches to a few meters in diameter crisscrossed above and below him. Most were intact, though some had been damaged and split open, spilling their contents onto the floor below. As Leonard walked forward, he noticed something odd about the plant.
He stood still, looking around until it hit him – the smell. Although the raw sewage was theoretically supposed to be sealed inside the various pipes and processing vats, there was always a horrific stench in every processing station. But this was the first time he had ever been in a processing station where the smell was almost unnoticeable. How's that possible? he wondered. For there to be no smell, there'd have to be no people. Maybe there was an evacuation? If the population of the island had dropped enough, that would explain why the sewage levels dropped enough to dial back the odor.
Leonard continued across the catwalk, avoiding the occasional waterfall of sewage overhead. He was heading towards the distant roar of the backup diesel generators that sounded like twin beacons summoning him forward in the direction of the control room. The plant was largely powered by the city's grid, but it did have two generators that would operate in the event of a power failure to ensure that pressure was maintained in the system. As Leonard turned a corner on the catwalk, he looked up a flight of stairs that led to the control room door. Instead of seeing the familiar windowless door, however, he was greeted by a buzzing, writhing mass.
The mass was unlike anything Leonard had seen before. Barely fifteen feet away up the flight of stairs it looked like a swarm of gnats, though it was bright silver in color, shimmering as it reflected light from his headlamp and the surrounding emergency lights. "What the fuck is that!?" Leonard half shouted in shock. The mass seemed to react to the words. It pulsed once, its swirling becoming more intense, and then it retreated towards the control room door. Instead of opening the door, the mass seemed to melt through it, passing through the cracks on the sides, top and bottom of the door like vapor. Unsure of what to do, Leonard took a step up, cautiously heading towards the doorway. The only way he knew to get out of the processing plant was through the control room. As he saw it, he had no other choice but to keep going, despite that thing, whatever it was. As his foot hit the second step on the stairwell, a sharp whine cut across the sound of the generators and Leonard threw his hands against his ears in pain.
The sound of metal grinding upon metal was deafening and after just a few seconds the lights went out, followed by the generators. The whine wound down along with the generators, and Leonard fumbled for the switch on his headlamp to turn it on. Looking around, he saw, on the far side of the control room, a faint silver shimmer rising out of a broken window as the mass drifted towards the ceiling in a slow, circling spiral. He watched as it floated to the top of the processing plant and disappeared into a broken pipe that jutted from the wall. As the last bit of it flitted out of sight, his headlamp blinked several times, growing fainter with each flicker as it slowly faded away to nothing. Leonard cursed loudly and reached for his pack, searching for the spare headlamp, unable to find it. He thought back to the pipe, when he had been crawling, and his pack had been caught on a piece of rebar. Pulling it free must have dislodged the spare lamp, or else it had fallen out somewhere else along the way.
Stuck on the catwalk, unable to see anything since the emergency lights died along with the generator, Leonard hissed into the darkness.
"Shiiiit."
7:15 AM, March 29, 2038
Rachel Walsh
When dawn broke, Rachel's eyes were red and she was shivering from the cold. The normally mild Georgia spring had given way to something cold and sinister. The sun was blotted from the sky by the ever-present clouds of dust and smoke that still hung high in the air. She had fallen asleep sobbing, a little girl whose heart was broken from the realization that her entire world had been torn from her. When she awoke, she was solemn and determined, analytical instead of emotional. For the last three years Rachel had spent most of her time away from her family working in a lab in Washington as one of the head researchers. Not normally given to emotional outbursts, her calm nature had finally taken over, helping her process her surroundings on autopilot while she tried to cope with the heart-wrenching devastation of what had happened. The new dawn brought a red tint to the landscape, illuminating the small pieces of the neighborhood that were left after—
Wait a second. What happened here? A tornado? An earthquake?
She thought back to the weather report that was on the television before she went down into the basement. Clear skies ahead for the next week, and temperatures hovering in the high 60's, perfect for that weekend getaway! It couldn't have been a tornado, and Georgia wasn't exactly known for its active earthquakes. Something else had to have happened.
Rachel's mind worked faster now, processing the information around her, the scientist side taking on the lead and pushing her emotions back even farther as she began to walk around. So it wasn't the weather, and it wasn't tectonic. Could it have been a meteor? A big enough impact could have caused this type of destruction, but it would have to have been a massive asteroid, one that NASA or some other agency would have picked up on first. Rachel stopped, her eyes widening as she continued her thought process. Not weather, not tectonic, not an asteroid impact. That only leaves... no, it can't be.
Rachel started yelling out again, panic setting in to her voice. "Hello?? Anyone? Is anyone there??" She began running from foundation to foundation, peeking under piles of debris and following what was left of the winding street down to the edge of the neighborhood, where it dumped out onto the local highway. Flattened trees, scattered debris and no sign of human life was the story throughout the neighborhood and the highway was no exception. Struggling against her dawning realization, she grappled for any type of rational explanation for this level of devastation. The only thing that came to mind was some type of massive gas leak, but even if that were possible, she couldn't imagine that there would be no first responders anywhere in the area. Besides, there aren't any gas lines running under the highway.
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br /> Movement in the corner of Rachel's eye broke her from her musings and sent her crouching low to the ground. A faint shimmering appeared in the distance, traveling parallel to the wreckage on the highway. While her initial impulse was to call out and go running and screaming towards whatever it was, something about it didn't seem quite right. As it grew closer, she began to discern its features. Slightly transparent, yet shimmering and reflecting the light in a thousand points of silver and white, it was some type of amorphous blob moving along the surface of the highway. It was as tall as an average human, yet it had no readily apparent shape. Instead, it seemed to flow back and forth, moving between pieces of broken metal and crushed cars, speeding along much faster than any human could hope to run.
The movement was beautiful, like someone had brought a wisp of smoke to life and endowed it with a heavenly shimmer. As it grew closer, Rachel could feel a buzz in the back of her head. A few seconds later, she began to hear it, high pitched and whining, like the sound of a hornet's nest after being torn apart by a child's thrown rock. Rachel crouched down, pressing her body as low to the ground as possible while still keeping the object in sight. The sickening feeling she had at the first sight of the object was growing as she began to realize what it really was.
As the object passed in front of her, no more than a hundred feet away on the opposite side of the highway, it came to a sudden halt. It sat there for a moment, bobbing up and down, back and forth, shimmering and buzzing. Rachel eyed it coldly, betraying no emotion as the object held steady. She felt as though it was gazing at her through invisible eyes, even though there were no discernible features anywhere on its form. Then, as suddenly as it had stopped, it sped up again, moving back and forth between the highway wreckage on its original path. Rachel kept still, not daring to move until the object was long out of sight. Once it was gone she stood slowly, eyes glued to the horizon where the object had vanished. Rachel shook her head grimly, her worst fears confirmed.
"They did it. So that's it, then. Those bastards really did it. And now we have to pay the price."
Final Dawn: Episode 2
7:32 AM, March 29, 2038
Rachel Walsh
Rachel sat down on the edge of the highway, her mind still reeling with the consequences of what she had just seen.
"I don't believe it."
Yet there it had been, plain as day, not a stone's throw away from her, proof that one of her deepest fears had come to life.
As Rachel’s mind churned through the scenarios and consequences of what she had seen, a noise from behind her made her jump, whirling around defensively. Sam, her dog, came slinking up behind her, his deep brown eyes staring off in the distance where the “thing” had disappeared. Sam was normally quite brave, unafraid of larger dogs and thunderstorms. Yet that thing had spooked him so much that he had stayed behind, cowering in the ruins of her house until long after it passed.
Rachel knelt beside Sam and stroked his head softly. "It's okay, boy. Nothing to worry about. They won't hurt you. They're gone now." Sam visibly relaxed as she comforted him and he eventually became his normal self again.
As Rachel walked back towards what was left of her house, she continued to take in the damage to the neighborhood — or what little of it still remained. The streets were half destroyed. Large pieces of asphalt were either cracked or had been torn from the earth and flung to who-knew-where. Aside from an even scattering of debris, the only evidence left of most of the homes were bits and pieces of foundations and basements. Her house, situated at the end of a cul-de-sac (better for defense, Jeremy had once claimed) had fared best of all.
When Rachel and Jeremy moved to the area, it was nothing like it had turned out to be. Instead of a neighborhood filled with homes, it was merely construction sites and empty lots. Though a neighborhood association was still being formed, Rachel and Jeremy had purchased their home before it was completely formed. This gave them certain leeway with how they built their home and Jeremy took full advantage of this leeway.
The foundation had been infused with a new space-age carbon nanotube variant which gave the concrete immense resilience against outside forces. The extra-deep basement had been built from this same material and enlarged to cover nearly double the floor space of the main floor of their home. Most of this work was against the neighborhood association’s guidelines, but they had managed to sneak it past thanks to some clever paperwork and more than a few dollars’ worth of palm-greasing.
Despite this and other unique building techniques, most of Rachel's house had been obliterated, but at least she was able to make out a complete outline of the foundation. After seeing the damage firsthand, she was convinced about what had happened. The sight on the highway, though, had pushed her over the edge, proving that what had occurred couldn't have been natural.
"Nuclear," she muttered to herself, stepping carefully through the remains of her living room as she made her way back to what was left of the basement entrance.
The only thing powerful enough to cause this much damage in such a brief period of time had to have been a nuclear explosion. Based on the damage levels (and the fact that she had managed to survive), it had most likely been somewhere to the south, directly over Atlanta. As Rachel began to turn over the significance of this fact in her mind, she stopped herself. No, I’ve got to stop this. There’s no time. What’s done is done. I’ve got to get to Washington and set it straight.
5:18 AM, March 29, 2038
Marcus Warden
Marcus groaned as he came to, a sudden spasm arcing through his back to his lower legs. “What the hell happened?” As he opened his eyes, he blinked several times, struggling to see through the black haze that hung over them. After a few seconds, Marcus realized it wasn’t his vision that was the source of the problem, it was the fact that it was still dark. As another spasm shot through his back, he groaned again and tried to pull himself up. Through the murky darkness he could barely make out the outline of the rows of bus seats that he had been thrown on when – Wait, what happened?
His memory was murky like his gaze, but as he moved around, pulling and pushing himself off of the seats, his vision and memory both began to clear. An image of some sort of mass rushing past him sprang into focus and he gasped as he remembered what had occurred, slipping off of the seats and falling once again. This time, though, he managed to catch himself, though a sharp pain shot through his arm and he heard the sound of broken glass. Marcus cursed loudly, screaming in pain and regretting his decision to rest inside the bus.
Marcus held his hand close to the window, taking advantage of what little moonlight was present. He winced as he saw the large piece of glass embedded in his hand. He held the wounded hand over his head in an attempt to stem the blood loss, then he reached into his backpack with his free hand. He pulled out some rags that he had grabbed from the convenience store and wrapped them around his hand, being careful not to shift the piece of glass that was wedged into his skin. He grabbed a bottle of off-brand vodka and gnawed on the cap, eventually twisting it off, then poured a liberal amount directly on the wound, gritting his teeth at the pain. Once the wound was sterilized as best as he could manage, he gently tugged on the glass, pulling it out slowly and deliberately.
Thankfully, although the piece was large, it wasn’t very wide and it hadn’t penetrated as deeply as he first thought. Once it was out, he poured another dash of alcohol over the wound and quickly wrapped it with the rags. Though he had an emergency first aid kit with him from his camping trip, he didn’t want to risk wasting it on the wound, given how minor it now appeared to be.
Marcus shuddered as he exhaled, his shoulders slumping forward and his head bowing down and resting on his chest. For the first time since waking up in the bus, he looked at his watch. Nearly sunup. Crud. Whatever had knocked him out in the bus hadn’t gifted him with a very restful sleep even though he had been unconscious for a few hours. Still, dawn was still a couple hours away, so there was a chance he
could rest for a bit before continuing on.
Marcus crawled to the back of the overturned bus and found an open space where a row of seats had been dislodged and flung forward, leaving enough room for him to curl into the fetal position and lay down flat. As he put his head on his arm and cradled his wounded hand, his brain finally began to churn and process what had happened. Whatever the thing in the bus was, he had never seen anything like it. The light from the lantern had given it some kind of unearthly shimmer as it rushed towards him. And the noise. I’ve never heard anything like it. Some type of... buzzing or bass? Whatever it had been, it had left him relatively unharmed, even though he had been knocked out again. The stress must be getting to me. Two times I’ve blacked out in the last day is three more than I’ve blacked out the rest of my life.
Marcus continued to ponder the strange apparition, going over the few details he remembered in his mind as he slowly drifted off to sleep. Sheltered from the wind and chill outside the bus, he fell into a deep sleep, his body doing its utmost to recover from the day’s events.