Year 2037.
"Just take the damn picture already Liz, the meeting with them producers is in half an hour."
She watched as her coworker tried to position a plate so that the sunlight from the window by their seat could hit the strategically placed, and chantilly-covered, strawberry on top of a stack of pancakes.
"Can't rush art, Mel!" Liz analyzed the plate for a second and spun it a little to the right. "And I've told ya already, go right ahead and eat, ain't gotta wait for me."
Mel was already munching on a hash brown while rolling her eyes skyward, only to regret bringing her sight back to her friend who was now squatting in the middle of the diner, angling her phone at the pancakes, then finally sitting down to select the best filter possible.
"What you even doing that for girl?" Mel felt better now that the stack of pancakes was finally being cut into, and dipped her remaining hash brown in egg yolk after passing Liz the maple syrup.
" I've only just started on this new diet, and decided to post my progress online. Helps keep me honest 'bout it."
Mel did her best to keep a neutral face while observing the pooling syrup by the pancakes. " Right... A diet."
The maple syrup bottle hit the floor suddenly, and all the lights in the diner went out.
"What in the - LIZ!"
Mel lunged her upper body across the table, gripping her friend's jacket as she started leaning out of her seat, but coundn't hold her across the table.
The sound of Liz hitting the floor was drowned by a loud sequence of crashes outside, and when she looked out the window Mel saw a pile-up of three vehicles and several unconscious people.
Inside the diner she was the only one still alive.
.
Bill tried to sit up, looking around slowly. His back hurt, his head was pounded fiercely, and when he tried to lean agains his hands he screamed, looking down he could clearly see his right wrist was broken, his hand bent at a weird angle. He touched the back of his head where it hurt most with his remaining good hand, and came back with blood.
He started looking around slowly, the last minutes coming back to him. He'd been jogging at the park, enjoying some lo-fi hip-hop and the end of summer breeze, and then he'd been thrown off his feet by some kind of strong wind.
I probably hit this tree right here on my way down. No time to panic, gotta find help.
He managed to sway back to his feet, head pounding so much he could almost forget the pain in his wrist. He had to throw up less than three steps later, strong nausea hitting him. Fearing a concussion he tried to stop the panic swelling in his chest by concentrating on walking towards the road visible through the trees. He had to stop a few times to breathe and refocus his mind, which seemed to want nothing more than to lay down for a long nap he wasn't sure he'd wake up from, but eventually he reached his goal.
The road was on top of a slope, and from here he could see that, whatever launched him off his feet, happened not so far away, bringing down trees and creating a small clearing some distance away in the woods. He thought he could see someone kneeling there, and made up his mind quickly to try and reach whoever it was. He'd lost his phone, and it would be some miles back to civilization, he liked his chances better with the help of someone else.
Also, maybe they need help...
As he carefully made his way down the slope on the other side he realised it was hard to breathe, and had to stop for a second when his mind decided it was the best moment to remember the symptoms of broken ribs and a punctured lung he'd seen once on a medical tv show, and launch him on a full blown panic attack.
He didn't know how long he stood there, grasping his shirt above his fast paced beating heart, fighting to breathe, not knowing if it was due to the sheer terror he was experiencing or a punctured lung. He finally reminded himself he was Catholic, and had lived an ok life, certainly never sinned heavily, mostly leading a boring day to day. He'd get into heaven.
After a few minutes of prayer he felt his adrenaline peak pass, and wiped the sweat from his forehead, feeling his shirt stuck to the moisture on his back.
His vision was swaying a little, but he was now more focused, looking around to situate himself and go back to his rescue mission, doubled as a help seeking endeavor. He started walking towards the fallen trees, thanking God briefly for their small to medium sizes, as he certainly wouldn't be able to clamber over huge trunks full of branches with a broken wrist and what he was certain was a concussion, and a possibly, almost definitely, punctured lung.
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After a while walking over what he could clearly see were trees forcefully ripped from the ground, their roots still mostly intact, and doing his best not to trip on the holes left by whatever violence happened when they were plucked from the ground, he saw a person in the middle of an unnatural clearing, destruction surrounding their hunched form, the ground turned over for a couple feet around them.
"Hello, are you okay?"
He closed the few feet of distance between them and fell to his knees by who he could see now was a woman.
"I'm Bill, what's your name? Are you well? Where are you hurt?"
The woman didn't lift her head, her dark brown hair hiding her face from him, her hands clutching her shirt at the stomach and her hair on the other side of him. He could see, now that he was so close enough to her, that she was shaking uncontrollably, and as sweaty as he was.
As he thought about how to get her out of that state he realised she was wearing some weird clothes.
Dressed in grey from head to toe, she was clad on some type of military garment looking jacket and pants, but the material seemed to be plastic. Even her boots had that weird aesthetic, with no details, just plain grey plastic. Somehow wet plastic. He sensed that something wasn't right.
On her chest though, a little metal plaque read Amalthea. He decided to try to communicate with her again.
"Amalthea, can you hear me?"
She was now shaking her head side to side, as if trying to make his presence disappear, and he let his left hand, that was angling for her shoulder, drop to his side.
"We need to get out of here, do you hear me?"
Oh God, how can I get this woman out of here, and why are her clothes so clean despite the turned over patch of soil she's kneeling on top of, and why is she...
He suddenly had the strange idea that she didn't fall here, or came to kneel here by happenstance, or even walked here guided by curiosity or fear, like he did.
She IS the reason for this. She was the one who caused this somehow. She is responsable for my being hurt.
And then even more pressingly.
She is probably dangerous.
Bill didn't have much time to ponder those thoughts, or come to any conclusion, or take any action. She let a blood-curdling scream, her body leaning forward until her forehead touched the earth, and a second explosion happened.
.
Officer Hanter had been a street cop in a megalopolis with close to twenty million people for almost twenty years before retiring. He could say with conviction that nothing could surprise him anymore. Having been through bomb scares and actual terrorist attacks, seen women locked in basements and in violent marriages, helped rescue people from fires, stuck elevators and kidnappings; He'd been to drug dens, seen people who'd OD'd, even talked a guy off the ledge of a twenty stores building once. He'd seen death, he was no stranger to chaos and high-stress situations.
This, though, shocked him to his core. He had no idea what to do, completely lost in the middle of the street, all around him people were dead, vehicles were crashed, against poles, walls or in pile-ups, people were leaving stores dazed, some bleeding, some carrying products, some crying. He was holding his cell phone with both hands, the damn thing wasn't working. He was sure the battery had been half full a few minutes ago, but now the black screen stared back at him mockingly.
He kneeled by a man dead on his stomach and started looking through his pockets, finally finding his cell in the inner pocket of his very expensive suit. It also wouldn't turn on.
His mind blanked and he stared at the dead guy laying peacefully on his side, now that Hanter had moved him.
He couldn't contact his wife and daughters. He had no way of knowing how they were. They lived almos half an hour away by car.
The dead man looked so peaceful, not a blemish on his skin, just a small scrape on his suit pants by the knees, probably because he'd kneeled over in his death.
He couldn't say how long he stared at those knees.
Someone bumped into him and he almost fell on his back. The cell on his hand went flying to the middle of the street by a car that was on fire and upside down. How hadn't he see that before?
A woman came running from a diner a little ahead and grabbed his arm. She was panicked and crying, trying to talk to him. He didn't react for a few seconds; his ears were ringing he realised, his breath coming in fast-paced rasps.
I need to calm down, I'm having a panick attack.
He felt like his chest was full to the brim with an unconfortable energy, anxiety, he suspected, with a huge dose of adrenaline, making his hands tremble, sweat pooling on his back and armpits.
The woman was now trying to pull him towards the diner. He let her, using her desperation to get to his feet.
A lot of people were dead inside.
A few on the floor, but mostly people had just laid their heads on the table in front of them, or over plates of food, bumping into cups of coffee, juice and water.
He felt a stabbing on his chest, like his adrenaline had just spiked in a concentrated pinch on his heart, and leaned againt a table.
All I don't need right now is a heart attack.
He had to find his family; there was no other thing to be done, nothing else mattered. Why was he even in this diner?
His heart was going to explode.
He felt like a huge wave of energy started coming from his heart, rapidly filling every nook of his body, all the way to his toes, flowing like water, Now it felt like the pressure was rising, since there was nowhere left for the energy to go. His head started pounding, and he fell to his knees.
He had no idea what was happening, not to the city, not to the people, not to his family, and not to himself.
The woman was looking at him with wary shock on her face, like she was scared he might puke on her shoes, and she was slowly backing away.
He passed out when the worst stabbing happened on his chest, a wave of energy hurled the woman all the way to the wall on the other side of the diner, caused the windows to explode outward and dislodged the bodies on the tables, which now lay all on the floor.