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Sunlight fills the world out side my eyelids… but how? I was in my lab, wasn’t I? Was it all just a dream? Grunting slightly I feel around for my glasses. It was then I realized that it was no dream. My eyes snap open and for a moment I’m blind, as my eyes adjust; I am stunned.

‘Were in the fuck am I?’ I think wearily. I was sitting in the bottom of a very wide and deep hole. My clothes were ripped to shreds and burned, now nothing more then rags. My body, oddly enough seemed perfectly fine. I test my limbs and find out that everything works. I begin to spot medal fragments from my lab and home. Judging from the scatter, I placed my self at ground zero, where what ever happened, well…happened. The ground was scorched black, still smoking. I climb to my feet and begin the task of climbing out of the hole, thanking god that I was still alive.

On the way up the incline, I stop and take note of some spots were something had burned so intensely, the sand had turned into glass. In other places pieces of my lab equipment were fused together. Every were I looked; something was melted or twisted beyond anything I could recognize. On my way out of the hole, one of my thoughts was that my cold fusion reactor had somehow overloaded, some others included gas build up, malfunction in the hanger, or a short in the particle accelerator. Once more, I thank god I was alive.

Almost an hour later, I was out and overwhelmed at the size of the hole. No, not a hole; a crater. It was about a mile wide and 750 feet deep! As I return to pondering about what really happened, the sounds of helicopters, only miles away, reaches my ears.

Even though it has been years, there was still a large risk that someone would recognize me, and then they would start to wonder why I didn’t grow old like them. Mankind wasn’t ready for that kind of power.

“Oooohh… come on!” I cry in frustration, first my lab and home, now this? What the hell was I going to tell people? From the size of the crater, the fireball had to at least be over 2 miles high and a mile wide. No one in their right mind would miss that, not only that, but they are going to start asking questions. “Crap… crappy, crap, crap.” I say out loud, and begin to pace, my brain racing to find a way out of this. I begin to look franticly for anything that could help me, but nothing had survived the blast. Nothing except me. I have no choice, I run to hide.

My cover wasn’t very good; a couple of boulders, only four or five hundred yards away from the crater, but it was the best I could do for the time being. Soon the helicopters were in view. There were 7 of them, 5 Bell UH-1H Hueys and 2 AH-1W Super Cobras, no less. The first 2 Hueys landed, while the Cobras circled over head. Military troops jump out holding M-16A2, and M-60 machine guns. I counted about 10 or 15 of them, they quickly formed a perimeter as the other Hueys landed; unloaded scientists and shut down. ‘Crap’ I thought once more ‘now what?’

I can’t run because the guards, or the Cobras overhead, would see me. They would do one of two things, one was shoot me dead, or the other was to shoot out my kneecaps and take me in for questioning, and the Army had a bad track of shoot first, shoot some more, and when the target was WAY beyond dead, try to ask it question or two.
So neither seemed good to me, but on the other hand, I was the middle of the desert, without food or water, the sun was rapidly rising, and there was no way of knowing how long those idiot scientists were going to stay. If they were anything like me, I’d die of old age long before they even thought about leaving.

As I sit there, I can hear the scientists talking. A few of them seemed to think that it was a crashed UFO site. Others thought that it was a meter. The rest thought it was a Russian spy plane. As they argued, I snickered to my self “What next?” I thought, “Them thinking it was a Germen bomb?” I laughed to my self over that.

Becoming restless, I returned to checking my body over. Once more I noted the lack of injury, and then I noticed something else. “Well… hello!” I thought to myself. My body had changed for the better. My arm and legs had become muscled. My chest had become tone and I had a twelve pack. As I sat and admired my new body, a thought popped into my head out of nowhere. “I’m the best looking super nerd in the world.” I had to bite my hand to keep from laughing out loud.

The sound of turbines starting stopped my snorting. I poke my head out form behind the rock. Indeed the Hueys were starting. The wine of the small starters gave way as the turbines coughed and powered up. Slowly the 48 foot blades began to spin. One of the scientists ran over to the army officer, over the whine of the turbines and the crack of the blades as they broke the sound barrier, I strain to hear the conversation.

“…Need equipment… stay on alert.” was all I caught. Then he ran back to his Huey and they took off, the Cobras following, leaving just me and the solders. A few minuets after the helicopters had disappeared over the horizon, the officer calls his men over and they begin to talk.

‘Hum… Time to make good on my escape.’ I think. Slowly and warily, I began to (much to my irony) army crawl towards another bolder about 20 or so feet away. ‘Bloody hell, this shits hot.’ thinking the obvious. My arms were beginning it burn and sand was getting everywhere.

As soon as I got behind the rock, I sat up and began to blow on my hand and arms. ‘Damn, this is going to hurt later.’ I mutter. As I rest for 2-3 moments I scan ahead, noting that the next rock was 50 feet away, sighing, I start on my way once more. In about 30 seconds I made up my mind. ‘To hell with this.’ I say, getting up and running crouched over the rest of the way. After reaching the rock, I risk a peek back, the solders hadn’t seen me. Thus it cycle repeated itself, run, check, rest, run, check, rest, on and on.

After an hour of hunched over running rock to rock, I finally decide that I’m far enough away to stand. My back cracks and I grunt as I straighten up, still grunting and rubbing my back I begin to walk to the next group of rocks. The sun was high in the air and the heat waves were pouring out of the sand. Approaching the rocks I think ‘I need to get out of the sun.’

As I walk around them, I discover a small cave. I mutter out a “Thank god” as I poke my head in to make sure nothing poisonous was in there, a train whistle wailed a mile away to my left. That gave me an idea, after dark I’d hop onboard a train and head… head somewhere. In the meantime as I take in my surroundings, I note that boulders the size of small mini-vans seemed to have rained down even this far, adding to my overloaded cold-fusion reactor or particle accelerator short theory.

I slowly crunch my 5’ 8” body in to the cave, and settle in for a nap. As I sit there, I see something that makes me venture out of the cave once more. Equine hoof prints surround the cave, but that’s not what caught my attention, it was how they were placed. Whatever it was I guess two things. It walked upright, and judging from the space between each print, was about my size.

After much wandering I get a rough idea of what went on, but nothing made sense. The tracks first came in the direction of the train tracks, walking, then something made the horse run, more than likely the rocks falling out of the sky, but it was still wrong, not of how it ran, but rather of were the horse ran too. It ran straight for the cave. After that it walked towards my old home.

The fact that my back was now burning, brought me out of my thoughts. I settle back into my cave, and think. ‘What had left those tracks? Certainly not a regular horse, it must have human intelligence, why else would it hide in the cave?’ These thoughts buzz around as I fall asleep.

As I stare up at the stars, one of my hoofed legs slightly dangling of the moving boxcar, I think back to the fireball. Yet again, I’m forced to wonder what had made it. But there was something else that bothers me about it. Something besides the heat had radiated out of it, pain, anger, sorrow, and a feeling of loneliness, of an empty heart. I shudder as I recall the feelings; it was so… so familiar, and yet so different. I had been feeling those emotions ever since I came here, but those ones were old and deep, like scars that would never go away. I close my eyes and in my mind I see the fire, and the black dot in the middle, then I pass into the deep embrace of sleep.

Story Copyright 2006 “the White Wolf”, all rights reserved.
Unauthorized reproduction or distribution prohibited under penalty of law.
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