Tag: murder

Short Story: Doomed Somnambulist

~ S.M. Nolan ~ Leave a comment

A distant thrum cooed along the streets followed by ultra-bright LED head-lights. They galloped across rain-slicked asphalt and illuminated the rain-drops as if in freeze-frames. Attached to them was a modern electric-engine sports car. The thing was near-silent in broad daylight, at night a ghost. The only suggestion of its presence was the whisper of water spraying from its tires compelled along straights, corners, and otherwise-empty streets by a lead foot.

Attached to that foot was Mick Connell at the wheel. A descendant of a long line of Irish, hot-headed, drunkards, flaming red hair topped his Cromagnon-skull above a perpetual brood. The glass-quart bottle of off-brand bourbon raised to his lips made his vices all the more obvious.

A pothole sloshed liquor over his face, down the front of his black, button-up shirt. He cursed, capped off the bottle, and tossed it into the passenger seat. He fought to dry the wet spot with a hand. A droning horn drew his mind up. He swerved right with an angry growl. The horn doppler-shifted away. He cursed again, grabbed absently for the bottle and took another pull off it.

This time he drained the bottle, tossed it into the back seat. It clanged with a few others he’d polished off earlier. The car threw itself around a wide curve of a ramp and the highway spilled out ahead like a endless, faceted onyx.

Mick had only goal; murder that cheating whore and her man-bitch. Mick didn’t care if the guy lived in a corporate penthouse or the white-house, no-one humiliated him like this. The whore would get what was coming in time, but this was a matter of honor and a man’s now-broken, unspoken rules. It didn’t matter how rich you were, you didn’t dick another man’s wife.

“Shirley. That cunt. She’s done this. And in my home. Fucking brought him into my home and took it on my bed.”

Didn’t matter now, he knew. The place was burning to the ground. He’d already seen to that. He’d poured the gasoline himself, lit and dropped the match. They’d probably get him for arson, insurance fraud. A nickel or dime as punishment. He could do that. It was the principle of the thing. He lit the place up, watched it burn down, and in five to ten years, he’d be back to salt the earth.

There was only thing left to do, and he would do it without fear of the repercussions.

They’d been friends once, or so he’d thought. The truth was he couldn’t be sure anymore. He couldn’t be sure of anything really. All he knew was he’d run through the latest security footage from the house. He stopped specifically on the bedroom, hoping to see Shirley undressing or rubbing herself off. What he found drove him into a rage instead.

And now he was driving to murder that bastard. The gun in his waistband was a newer model, chambered with a .45 ACP round. It and the bullets were expensive. A whole mag cost more than a bottle of liquor nowadays, but it would be worth every penny to pump him full of lead– just like he’d pumped Shirley. His wife on his bed.

“Friends,” Mick scoffed angrily. “Fuck-friends, that’s what. Friends that fuck each other over.”

Mick could only vaguely remember when Koren had been his friend. It was mostly the fault of too many nights liquored up. He’d remember in the morning, then forget again by evening, whether or not he actively realized it. He’dd never forget this though.

The car raced down an off-ramp and into the city. It rocketed and weaved through sparse traffic from the late hour. Shirley was supposed to be working with Koren, for him, on some secret project for their company. Every night she’d come home sallow-faced and haggard. At the time, Mick thought it was from rough work. Instead, it was from getting dicked by the bastard. Well tonight would be the last time.

Mick raced into the parking garage of Koren’s building, skidded to a halt across three, empty spaces near an elevator. The engine died. He got out, stormed for the elevator, and queued the penthouse floor. He keyed in a code his “friend” had once given him; it still worked.

The elevator lurched upward. Mick pulled the pistol from his waist-band, flipped the safety off. His ears turned hot, flushed, and with a breath he checked the breech, let it slide back to chamber a round.

It would be quick, painless. For Koren anyhow. Twenty-five to life, probably, but time off for a crime of passion for Mick. Twenty even– plus the nickel for arson. More like fifteen or thirteen with good behavior. Nothing worse than he’d been through as a kid. Hell, with the right bribes, he might even get put up in one of those swanky, white-collar places they stuck bankers.

The doors opened on the elevator and he surged out like a tidal wave of fury. He stormed along a hall to a lone door at its end. With two, heavy kicks, the door burst in off its hinges. Mick exploded inside screaming incomprehensibly with the gun aimed at Koren.

The suited man sat across a coffee table from Shirley, his tie pulled down. His hair was ruffled, eyes dark, sleepless. Shirley looked equally haggard. For a moment, Mick paused. It was enough to slow his speech. The dumbfounded pair eyed him dully, began to grasp his accusations. Mick fingered the trigger, its barrel on Koren’s head. He took a deep breath, knowing it was a delicate moment. All the same, his mind and brain were frayed, and an interruption made things worse.

“Mick, bloody hell, what are you on about?”

Mick threw a memory card across the paper-strewn coffee-table between his wife and his victim, “I know what you two did. On my bed. In my home.”

Koren and Shirley exchanged a look; they knew what he was implying, but had not the faintest idea what the hell could’ve make him think it. Koren moved to stand. Mick’s finger tapped pistol’s trigger. He hesitated, locked eyes with Mick, “I just want to check the card.”

Mick sneered, allowed it. He wasn’t sure why. Maybe to savor the moment a little longer. Koren pulled over a laptop, played the lone, edited-down vid in its directory. Koren watched the clip for a moment. A furrow took residence on his brow. He swiveled the laptop outward so Shirley could watch. The vid played over, on repeat. The second time through, Mick was forced to watch.

“There’s nothing there, Mick,” Shirley said sadly.

“Not even you,” Koren added.

Mick stared at the screen, he’d clearly seen it earlier. Had double-checked the card over and over. The timestamp in the vid’s corner was even right. All the same, there stood a lone bed from a wide-angle. It was empty. The same five minutes of vid played over and over, the bed empty.

Mick was sobered by reality, “Wh… what’s going on?”

Koren shook his head, sighed, “I wish we could do something about that.”

Shirley agreed, “If we could, it would mean we could eliminate the problem itself.”
He wantonly waved the gun between them, “What are you talking about?”

Shirley was on her feet, voice soft, she pushed his arm down, eased the gun away from him, “Mick you’re ill. You imagined all of it. You don’t remember. Every-time the black-outs happen, you reset. Your brain creates dreams where memories should be. It’s similar to sleep-walking, in a way.”

Mick’s eyes began to well up, “S-so you n-never cheated on me?”

Koren was aghast. “Mick, you’re my brother, mate. I’d never do that to ‘ya.”

Shirley took Mick’s face in a soft hand, “No, honey. I understand what’s wrong with you. I knew when we met. I could never do that.”

Mick suddenly collapsed in a heap, reality weighing down on him. He sobbed, bound forever to eternally sleep-walk through life with terrible dreams mascarading as memories; forever a doomed somnambulist.

Short Story: Apex

~ S.M. Nolan ~ 2 Comments

The night air was frozen with inaction, the wind petrified by its own icy gale. When it did see fit to blow, it did so begrudgingly and with a fury that froze everything to its very core. Even the stars saw no reason to appear despite the cloudless sky. It was as if some phantom force had turned them off until it felt they were needed again.

Beneath that vast emptiness was nothing but glacial fields and sprawling ice. That is, unless directed southeast, nearest the pole. There a few, hilly rises would break the monotonous flatness until they were over-passed and the land became flat again. The nearer one approached however, the more their shapes would redefine.

From their distant, mound-like forms, they would turn first to dome half-spheres. Then, upon even closer inspection, the domes would reveal a pattern. The largest would be seen to tower above the rest and encircle it like particles to an atomic nucleus. Upon being beside or beneath these semi-spheres it would then become obvious that each was composed of individual panes of glass, each one slightly conical in the center to keep off snow and ice, and otherwise were curved to varying degrees.

One by one, the rows of panes curved to form the dome shapes. Beneath them though, the truly wondrous marvel was a creation of neither man’s ingenuity nor his daring. Rather, it was a creation of nature, fused into a block of ice roughly ten feet wide, six feet deep, and eight feet long.

Located with a 3-D Resonance Imager– a device that sent sound-waves through objects then recorded their vibrations. The interpreting computer then read the reverberations, and arranged them into a picture of various contrasts of light and dark, that by degrees, formed an accurate render of the site examined. All of this was carried out via antarctic rovers, computer-guided across barren tundra, from one room beneath the largest dome.

The other twelve domes housed full-sized living spaces for the scientists, researchers, and various others staffing the facility. The entity in charge of this great place, known as the International Collective of Scientists, had footed the project’s five billion dollar costs with grants from just about every country in the world. From each of them too, it drew its employees; every individual required, and to the best of abilities, accommodated, to live in the Antarctic glacial lands for an indeterminate amount of time. The structures they occupied were surrounded by ice, that for millenia-untold, had been undisturbed by anything beyond the gales of ice and snow.

The Antarctic Research Treaty, created by men and women infinitely smarter than those that passed it, was a piece of UN legislation meant to help collaborative scientific efforts. Thus, the ICS was born and the domes built. If asked though, the people there would have simply called it “The Dome.” Though they lived spread across the other domes, it was in the largest of them that their lives were carried out. Whether in research, work, eating, or even recreation, life was lived largely in “the Dome.” That was the level of commitment the ICS had built it with.

Still, the wonder in the laboratory of one, particular team of scientists rivaled everything else in the Dome. Arguably, it might even rival anything thus far discovered by humanity. It would, if all suspicions were true, confirm an eon of speculation. Moreover, it would rewrite the history of the planet– if not the universe.

Presently, heat lamps were stationed around the block of ice that was half-melted. Streams of cold water leaked down into the floor. The team responsible for its discovery were clustered around it in white, level-1 containment suits to protect themselves from the discovery and vice-versa. A few held clipboards, but all of their faces were fixed in consternation, staring at the ice and the thing half-protruding from it.

For nearly two days the team went without sleep. Most fell into varying stupors, near collapse, awaiting the moment they could, with the utmost care, gather round to liberate the find from the ice. The twisted, humanoid creature, was perfectly preserved down to its blue, leathery hide. Once removed and laid upon a table, the remaining ice-block was combed for any particulate matter left behind. After thorough analysis, it was concluded that not so much as a skin cell had been misplaced. The creature was intact down to its cellular level, preserved as if in a time-capsule at the moment of its freezing.

A few people took pictures for the record. Flash-bulbs strobed from cameras that homed in on the strangely embryonic features of the subject. It appeared as human fetus might, early in its development; at least as far as the head, eyes, and face were concerned. They had oblong, grotesque proportions. The arms and legs were distended, over-long with hands whose five fingers were similarly longer than normal. Nail-like claws a few centimeters in length adorned the grisly hands with points so sharp it hurt to look at them too long.

Clearly, this creature had evolved for combat, adapted to either extreme defense or hunting. The mouth was merely a slit in the otherwise overly large head, suggesting the creature had little to no use for vocalization. Most fascinating of all however, were the thick, bone-like plates plateauing the broader area of the limbs and torso. The protective adaptations broke only for the neck, head, and joint areas that were marred by deep gouges, scars leftover from its life.

Clearly, this creature had come from violence.

Someone made careful measurements of the claws and the wounds, concluding they must have come from the another of the creature’s species. The debate it sparked, however academic, seemed to conclude in one way; this species was a violent predator. More importantly, it possessed strength that easily rivaled humans. Despite its distended, yet muscled form, someone theorized that with its brain size its intelligence would rival humanity’s. Were this creature alive today, it could topple Humanity with enough numbers.

The extraction of a skin sample immediately confirmed Earthen DNA. This was no visitor. Rather, it was a distant relative who’d appeared first on the evolutionary chain. The team would have to keep it quiet for now, but there was no doubt this species would have supplanted humans if living.

It was then that someone took another skin sample. The man leaned over to begin a small incision. The bulbous eyes flitted. The room froze. The person with the scalpel keeled over. Blood streamed from his eyes, nose, and mouth. His body stilled.

The creature sat up. All at once the team crumpled. They tried to scream, found their airways closed by invisible hands. The pressure in their heads built. Blood leaked from orifices. They fought to cry out. One by one, they realized what they’d done before dying from it: they’d awakened an apex predator– one capable of reason, intelligence, and very angry.

They knew their mistake when its words entered their minds. As if harsh whispers on a surf of disharmony, everything they’d only theorized was confirmed. With a lone sentiment, its hidden properties were revealed; “My kind will reclaim this world from you.”

The last to die was merely one of the first.

Short Story: Fabulous Honeymoon

~ S.M. Nolan ~ 3 Comments

The expedition of Vladimir Von Kaufer had been planned for months. It was widely known in Vladimir’s Hungarian hometown– a place notorious for spreading small news in big ways. The little village, as it was more apt to call it, consisted of about thirty homes. Each of them was situated in two circles of fifteen that expanded outward from the town-square in its center. The square, in turn, was a circle of a dozen buildings of varying sizes and uses.

The aforementioned represented the entirety of the village. It had a most peculiar name that, though known to residents, rolled so harshly off the tongue they merely called it “The Village” or “Home.” When abroad, and asked where the residents came from, most merely answered “Hungary.” Others parroted “the country,” as if their rural dwelling were the only in existence. For many of them, it might well have been.

The Village was such a melding of old-time living with new-world ways that on first glance, one would be forgiven for thinking it a town of Luddites. Anyone venturing in to visit its shops, or pass by at night would quickly recognize their error. Though the people kept the quaint, homely appearance for their own pleasure, it was as much civilized as any other place. Indeed, in some ways, more-so.

Thus, Von Kaufer’s expedition was bound to attract some measure of renown as soon as it escaped his lips. He made preparations for days, planning the best route to and through the cavern he would traverse. He hired on neighbors and friends to follow him in, promised a share of credit and loot if found.

Legend had it that long ago a gypsy caravan had run off with an entire estate after its owners had disappeared. Before the estate of the wealthy couple could be auctioned off, or passed to kin, the gypsies had raided it. So the legend went that all they left behind were the brick-walls and cobwebs. The caravan fled authorities, fearing discovery, and hid their boon for later recovery in the cavern.

It was said however, that the gypsy caravan had never been able to return. Over a decade, all manner of ills befell them until only one family-member remained. The old man, even more ancient than he’d been when liberating the possessions, could find no-one to follow him. He was said to have died a vagrant’s death steps from the mouth of the cavern where his boon lay hidden. The unmarked grave in The Village’s churchyard lent credence to at least some of these facts.

It was with this in mind that Vladimir Von Kaufer set about his planning. The cave had claimed many through its treacherous obstacles. No matter how far similar expeditions had made it inside, the cavern’s end seemed ever beyond reach. Some expeditions, ill-provisioned for the trek, had even returned unharmed and utterly dismayed. Most of their leaders lived in despair of their failure afterward. With their places as laughing-stock in folk-lore, they could never again convince others to follow them to that grisly place.

Von Kaufer however, had the upstanding confidence of all the Village’s people. As soon as the utterance came from his lips, men and women lined up to follow. It was as if his very reputation guaranteed he not return empty-handed. His own determination ensured it.

A week before the expedition was set to begin however, Vladimir fell ill. He was deathly pale, his hands cold and clammy, and his eyes sunken. He looked as though he had lost all the blood from his body. Indeed, his doctors concluded an anemic attack of unknown cause had thinned his blood to dangerous levels. That whole week passed with him in varying states of decay.

Then, for two whole days, Vladimir teetered on the brink of death. With him, the Village held their breath in hopes of his recovery so that he might complete his expedition. It would undoubtedly be the ultimate triumph, especially after so deathly an illness.

He rose from his bed on the second night, once more strong and colorful. Though the coldness of his skin had yet to abate, he assured everyone he would continue the expedition at once. Having already been past schedule by two days, he rounded up his team from their nearby homes, and set forth at-once for the cavern.

He rallied them at the mouth of the cavern before dawn, and plunged for its depths. Aided by head lamps, climbing ropes, harnesses and other miscellanea, they descended with their own weight in rations and water. Vladimir was certain they could not turn back lest they fail and never return. Each person in their own right agreed and loaded themselves amply.

For the first day, there was nothing ominous. They crossed chasms and scaled precipices in single file. When it came time to rest, it was past noon on the surface. The mile of rock between them and the sun cast them in darkness all the same.

The group collectively set down to eat and sleep, doing both with vigor. They awoke hours later with to find their number one less than they’d been before. Vladimir was disappointed. The man must have left, gone in the night so as to not be deterred by his leader or companions. The leader himself seemed to pity him, but rallied the group again and set forth.

Again, more climbing of plateaus, reverse-scaling of precipices and crossing of chasms all with a downward attitude. They neared the furthest point ever traversed, the cavern’s sometimes jagged, claustrophobic passages confirmed the fact. After one, particularly harrowing passage, the cavern opened up, and they took rest for the night.

Nine became seven. Two more had left. A man and a woman. They had previously been enamored with one another, smitten to the point that they must have convinced one another to flee. Nonetheless, the expedition would continue, the shares more robustly divided.

Vladimir led them forward at once, passed scattered skeletons from a lost expedition. The dusty bones and tattered rags of clothing from a past age infected the air with a lingering dread. It lasted until they bedded down again several hours later.

Again they awoke to fewer numbers. Seven became four. Vladimir seemed to halfheartedly dismiss the attitudes of the departed compatriots. All the same, they searched about, finding but one small trace of blood. A drip, only partially dried to brown, was muddled by the dust and dirt-laced floor.

A shudder went among the remaining expedition. Vladimir himself seemed unaffected. Perhaps it was by his cunning or confidence that he inspected the area. He felt around with his finger-less-gloved hands on the walls. Near the drip on a wall he found yet another fleck, evidently at hand height. It seemed someone had leaned against the rather sharp bit of rock too hard before fleeing.

No matter, Vladimir told the others, it was as rational an explanation as any. The other three, remaining comrades felt that so-present dread. Still they packed their sleeping equipment, and ventured forth, led as always by Von Kaufer’s vigor and tenacity.

It was during one of their short breaks that another comrade seemed to make off for nowhere. She had left her pack near the others and gone off to relieve herself. Much like Von Kaufer, she’d isolated herself for a moment, but unlike him, she never returned.

Vladimir spirits finally felt the blow. He had but two comrades left; one male and one female, whom both seemed as determined as he to go forward. Again they started forth, that awful dread afflicting even Vladimir’s seemingly unassailable vitality. When at last they bedded down for the night, Vladimir sank into a kind of depression. Even if by some means the treasure existed, he’d never offset the cost of the expedition by retrieving only one-fifth of the share. That was to say nothing of the lost hope of becoming wealthier off it.

He lie down to rest only to awake and find the last man gone. He, alone with the woman, would continue forward. There was equally as much dread between them now. Some phantom force, it felt, had cursed their expedition and would forever hound them. Still they climbed, descended, leapt and crawled. They knew not when the end of the cavern might come, but forewent sleep to ensure they see it as soon as possible.

It was nearly forty-eight hours after that last man had left Vladimir and the woman alone that they descended into a pit. From the wall they’d started down, they trudged forward. Their limbs and eyes were heavy, but their eyes wide, alert, peeled for anything signaling their boon.

Their headlamps swept the ceiling and walls for ways out of the pit. They found none. It was then that their lights flitted along the floors. Gold sparkles froze them. Their minds were stuck, stunned by what lay before them.

The far-wall was piled with gold and silver. Rubies and Sapphires gleamed in golden cups. Emeralds shined from inlaid fittings in silver cutlery and other tableware. Mounds of coins of gold, silver, even bronze, were scattered in a marvelous painting of riches. Priceless artworks in dusty, wooden frames seemed untouched by the ages. With them were equally earthen-hued trunks and cases which later revealed infinitely more jewelry.

Von Kaufer and the woman, Anika, embraced in excitement and triumph. They even kissed deeply, as though possessed by animal carnation at their success. It was then that Vladimir parted from Anika and stepped back a few paces.

“I must confess,” he said formally. “Five of those eight whom fled are not in the Village.”

Anika’s brow furrowed. She looked about to question him. His face flashed. All of his features became squared and pointed, including his carnivorous teeth. His eyes glowed yellow with fearsome slits and his back became arched as if poised to pounce. He expected Anika to recoil in terror.

Instead, she laughed heartily, “Three of those eight too, are neither home nor yet live.”

Her face took on a similar disposition. Anika’s blue eyes turned ice-cold white. Her back arched too, and her arms and legs became sinuous, her teeth long.

Vladimir laughed too. Their faces reverted, he stepped over and placed a hand in the small of her back, directing her to stand beside him as if his bride. They stared at the pile of riches together, chuckling for a long while.

There and then, Vladimir looked into Anika’s eyes and smiled, “We shall return to the village with as much as we can carry, then come back for the rest, no matter how many trips it takes.”

Anika flashed a deranged, predatory smile, “Then we will take the whole village, and add it to the pile in our home.”

Together they laughed with malice. They parted to begin stuffing their pockets. Vladimir had to admit it wasn’t what he’d expected, but it certainly wasn’t for the worse. His homecoming would only be but an extension of his good fortune. Together, he and Anika would reign, King and Queen, over the Village, as it drowned in blood.

She caught his eye over a mound of gold she sifted, “It will be a fabulous honeymoon.”

Bonus Short Story: To Strengthen One Another

~ S.M. Nolan ~ Leave a comment

Exhaustion. That was what he felt as he sat, hunched over on a concrete barrier. His orange vest and hard-hat were the beacons of his status as a rescuer– one of a few-hundred. Like them, he’d worked for near-on thirty-hours to dig corpses and even fewer survivors from the rubble. What used to be a downtown office block was now a post-war zone. The dust had settled, but only for those outside the quarantine zone lined by emergency vehicles for half-a-mile in every direction.

Every few minutes the dogs and their handlers would scurry past. The hounds nosed the ground while their handlers’ eyes were locked on their ears, tails, and muzzles. Like the rest, they waited for any sign that would prompt them to dig. They would hand off the barking dogs, scope through the debri for what weakened scents of the living or dead had been caught.

Across the one-time plaza, a woman in a police uniform with a radio to her mouth took orders to sweep and clear every few minutes. No-one was sure why; the damage had been done, and it wasn’t likely whomever had done this would return. They wouldn’t need to. All they had to do was flip on the TV to see the live vids that revealed the loss of an entire city block, the lives of most workers therein. The woman wasn’t even sure why she was there, but she knew she couldn’t leave. At that, she couldn’t have been dragged away either.

Most at the scene were like her; lost, confused, tormented by a moral quandary of whether their exhaustion was more important than the suffering of others under the rubble. No-one escaped the buildings before the bombs, but just as well, few people had been found. Most were dead. And now the rescue teams were beyond exhausted.

A great rumble kicked up from one of the blockaded roads, and someone shouted something about a convoy. A firetruck’s engine revved to part from the center of a barricade, then a convoy from the Army Corps of Engineers rolled in. It led the way for a series of construction and demolition vehicles. Flat-bed eighteen-wheelers arrived with curious looking, mechanical vehicles atop them. It wasn’t long before their purpose was revealed.

The Engineers piled out, ready to aid the rescue teams with blue-prints, enlivened vigor, and coffee by the barrel-full. The construction and demo-trucks fanned out around the inner-perimeter of the disaster, immediately began work. Bulldozers and back-hoes, front-loaders and excavators, and a quarter-mile’s worth of dump trucks worked with the dogs and handlers.

Together, they combed small areas with resonance scans that gave three-dimensional views of the rubble and Earth beneath it before beginning removal as gingerly as possible. Wrecking-ball cranes were hitched to the largest chunks of debris and lifted for the dumps.

A few more bodies were revealed, all but one dead. The woman was barely breathing, obvious even through her dust-caked, high-quality blouse. Her abdomen had the tell-tale bruises of internal bleeding.

Everyone present had seen her on television at some point– most during the business-segments of news-vids. She was an unliked, well-known contrarian that argued business matters for payment against most definitions of ethics. Even so, she was loaded onto a stretcher as carefully as anyone else, rushed across the site to a triage, and worked on as anyone in need. If it were any normal day, perhaps those present would’ve had words against the woman’s nature.

But this was not a normal day. It couldn’t have been. It is said that sin has no place in disaster; so benign seemed even her greatest sins that no-one even hesitated to help her.

More work, hours passed. More bodies, more dead, fewer survivors. Then came the Mechs;

those peculiar-looking vehicles on the trucks– like giant, hydraulic legs with clawed arms and blocky, snake-like heads atop metal shoulders. They were super-strong, mechanical exoskeletons built of high-strength steels and powerful hydraulic limbs. They could lift, carry, even hurl tons as easily and competently as a human with a tennis ball.

Each Mech was an armored cock-pit, accessible from the back, that an operator stepped into. The operators thrust themselves into computerized braces along the feet, legs, arms, hands, head and torso to allow for full-range of mobility. When the back came down, sealed the operator in, the Mech’s systems engaged to work with the strength of a full platoon of men. In time, the Mechs even gave most rescue workers time to sleep or recollect themselves.

When those workers sat for water or food, they fell asleep without pause, as dead to the world as its reaches beyond the quarantine zone had become to them. The Mech operators were praised for their appearance and timeliness as they quickly sifted through what remained of the buildings, filled the convoys of dump-trucks twice over, and uncovered more than a few people both living and dead.

It was said, after the fact, that over a million collective man-hours had been spent in the search and clean up of those few days. Most there agreed, if only due to the extreme fatigue they all eventually succumbed to. Were it not for the Mechs and their operators, some men and women might have literally dropped mid-dig. Though all there feared it, so too did they know that no man nor woman would stay down long. Each of the rescuers– from the dogs to the EMTs– were ready to commit themselves so fully as to rise in defiance of any would-be collapse.

There is much that can be said of the human spirit, but those few days its existence wasn’t debatable. Not in the sense that it had been before. Whether metaphorical, metaphysical, or just plain curious, that collective spirit became more real, corporeal. It became a wall of bagged sand against a tidal wave of grief and tragedy that, like Pandora’s Box, rose as a lid that closed to keep the worst at bay. Such is the nature of the Human spirit, and in it, the true purpose for our dominance of this planet; to live, love, and strengthen one another.