Eric couldn’t concentrate on any writing that night.
It wasn’t just the bumps and holes on the road, making the car ride more akin to trying to tame a wild horse for the first time, but the faint green tint that covered the world coming from inside the dark clouds of an approaching storm.
As usual, there was no such thing as a dark night anymore.
“Monroe, Dunninger, do you copy?” said a voice on the radio, with some muffle and static.
Eric quickly picked up the radio from the socket, as Mark was the one driving;
“Copy Mueller, what is the status?”
“There is a shelter for the Blight Storm about 20 minutes away from the base. Refrain from coming here and stay there for the remainder of the night.”
“Remain at the shelter, copy that,” followed Eric, before setting the radio back at the support.
“Should I change the GPS?” Eric asked.
“It is just a single road, we should see it on the way.”
“Just making sure, I don’t want to melt under the green stuff,” Eric mentioned.
“The green stuff is messing with the GPS anyway.,” Mark widely reprimanded.
“Well, ok Mom,” Eric said in a jovial tone as he turned the car’s radio on, looking for a music station to listen to.
He had no luck, most of it was pure static, so he settled for the only option, a local news station.
“Scientists have confirmed,” said a feminine voice on the radio, with the added faint static, something normal during night times, “that the new types of the storm should be expected to become a full integral part of the weather system and new measures to forecast them are in development…”
As the drive went on, Eric watched the outside forest, patches and more patches of trees covered in holes from the constant different storms striking the region.
“... remember to abandon your house in case of a special storm coming, especially if the sky is green, and seek the newly built shelters. At the time, it has been confirmed 5 types of those new weather systems…”
There was something in the tall trees they passed by that reminded him of home, of something he wanted to write about but never got the guts to do so.
Eric moved to grab the notebook, opening the glove box, but a bump on the road made everything inside fly around.
“Sorry,” Mark said quickly.
“... as good news,” continued the radio presenter, “ scientists confirm the identification of 5 stages for Pleor with the weather being a clue on how they change and how we could control it, with 7 being the most probable number of states -” but the radio cut of.
For the remainder of the ride, the world stood still under the upcoming green discharge that would burn it down. At least, as still as it could get as one drives on a road full of holes.
---
It was close to midnight when they reached the shelter. The car pulled up through a shutter opening into a dark, cubic room where other vehicles were parked.
The place at first appeared to be operating by itself, not a single soul to be seen.
There was nothing great to look at from the outside, a hastily made cube constructed with the newest steel sheets available on the market. Sections of it were still under construction, with rooftops or walls missing all over, while the air had a scent of fresh paint, but Eric could not see where it came from as every wall was unpainted. The color of the metal, a simple gray, was still raw everywhere the eye could see.
As soon as Mark opened the door from the parking lot to the inside building, the smell of fresh coffee overtook the one of paint, and the once silent building was now vibrating with life, quiet, yet present.
It was hard to walk around, the overflowing amount of people covered every inch of the floor, and the little mess hall had multiple queues of people waiting to grab a cup of coffee or sandwich, but eventually, the two friends managed to find a spot by a wall to sit on the cold floor and rest.
“So you’re a soldier boy?” asked a man sitting next to Eric. He had a thick southern accent that Eric couldn’t quite pinpoint from whence it came, dressed in tater clothes, the damage most likely caused due to overuse and time than due to the dust. Unlike years ago, when the number of soldiers skyrocketed to the point where uniforms were hard to get, now he and Mark were properly dressed.
“Yes sir, used to be a farmer, but not much farming to do with those damn storms.”
“Ah, this is true, my family and I had to move away from those blasted yellow storms in the south.”
“A Force storm?”
“Yeah, that one, whatever you call them,” followed the man. “But tell me, boy, when will you people give it to them?”
Eric was annoyed by the “boy” mentioned, he was, after all, 40 years old.
“Give what?”
“Retribution; We all know this didn’t come from space, it’d to be a weapon -”
“If that is the case, no one told us anything.”
“But you can feel, can't you? Even if the pieces of the rocket fell into Asia, they don’t want us to know it never existed, or that it was hit by them! I’m telling you.”
All the eyes in the room fell on Eric. He could hear them whispering, the ever-growing doubt that fear of the unknown brings.
“Almost all of the meteor fell on Asia,” entered Mark in the conversation, “they would’ve been pretty stupid to create a weapon that destroyed themselves.”
“Have you been there?” asked the man. “Maybe it’s a lie -”
The rain began to pour down, hitting the metallic ceiling with such strength it muffled the man’s voice almost to a point that it became impossible to even listen to him, and for that Eric was grateful. Rumors of the meteor never existing and countries blaming one another had increased in the last couple of years, as the storms began to be a thing, and the electrical purple sky developed into other states, harshing the lives of so many.
Eric didn’t want to listen to those things, a war now would be the worst thing that could happen to anyone, anywhere.
“War is always a bad thing, be it now or not…” he thought in silence, a memory almost springing to life in his mind.
And then the lights went out. Through slits in the misplaced steel plate connections, a green light invaded the safe room. You could not escape it, even in a room without windows.
Eric closed his eyes, pretending to fall asleep, but his mind was in the past…
“Should I write about it?” He though
“ANY DOCTORS AROUND?” screamed a man holding a girl in his arms.
With eyes adjusted to the dark, Eric noticed a man standing up and going after the one that just shouted. The two of them proceeded with the girl to the garage, the doctor returning by himself minutes later.
“Does anyone around here have an O Negative Blood Type?” asked the “doctor”.
Some whispers could be heard here and there, under faces lit by a smartphone, watching around to see if anyone answered…
But no one did.
A couple of minutes later, the “doctor” - or so Eric thought it was - approached him and called him to the garage.
“We might need your help, son,” said the doctor, in a gentle voice.
Using the car’s front light and some bed sheets, a makeshift location to treat the girl was created in the garage. When Eric approached, he noticed her arms had been bleeding, and she had a place of skin removed exposing the underneath layers, with an improvised tourniquet on her left arm.
“ What happened?” asked Eric, horrified.
“She …” the man who had her in his arms before spoke, “she heard some rumors from the kids around… that you could remove the infection by removing the part of your skin where -”
“I’m sorry Dad”, the girl cried. She must be around eleven years old. “I thought I would help you, I’m sorry,” she said amidst tears.
“It’s ok Laura, we can talk about it later, we need to fix this first,” her dad replied.
“The rumors keep growing,” said the “doctor”, “people forget they breathe and eat this thing every day, and that it is changing their DNA, there is very little we can do now. My job is getting harder and harder.”
“I told you, Laura, many times now, drinking water and taking a shower is the only thing that removes part of it, why did you…?”
“I’m sorry Dad, I just wanted to help, I -”
“She cut a vein,” the doctor began, “I’ve managed to stop most of it, but I’m afraid she lost far too much blood… we need a transfusion, but no one here - well, you must have seen it.”
“I’m not a type O Negative either. I don’t know what you would want with me.”
“There is a military base to the north of here right?” asked her dad. “Could you get in contact with them, to get her there, they might have the blood we need.”
“During this type of storm, the radio only works close by. I would need to be like, 5 minutes away from it to work… if it works.”
The dad’s face got pale. He was young, most likely not even in his thirties. He had a very current hairstyle, with spikes all around his dark hair. Eric wondered where people find time to dress up nicely.
The sound of the rain intensified, but the footsteps of people passing by the location echoed across the garage. They were curious, but they didn’t want to get involved.
Eric took a deep breath, memories flashing back into his mind.
“Would you be willing to allow me to bring her to the base with me right now?” Eric asked the father.
“But the storm…”
“Are you? You seem to have no other option.”
“Look, I don’t mind risking my life, but my girl, I can’t allow her -”
“I can’t guarantee I can go to the base and return safely, it’ll have to be a one-way trip. Staying or not, she might die either way.”
The father gazed at Laura, she was getting more and more pale by the minute.
“Alright,” the father answered. “But you’ll have to take me with you.”
Eric nodded and turned his back, leaving the conversation.
He walked to his car, opened the back door, and moved to grab the assault rifle in the back seat, but he quickly refrained from it.
“I don’t need this, I can do it without it.”
The car door slammed shut as soon as Eric took his arm out of it. Mark seemed pissed.
“You know that thing melts asphalt right? What do you think it will do to you? The car isn’t made of revested steel like this place.”
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“Not yet,” replied Eric, returning to the main room and ignoring his friend's plea.
He moved between the people with ease this time around, determined to do something, and climbed atop the counter where coffee was previously being served.
“Look, I know we are very tired and afraid, but there is a girl in dire need of blood transfusion, and unless no one here, truly, lacks type O negative, then I’ll have to bring her to the army under the storm… and I’ll need you all to help me.”
The silence was absolute, even the rain outside seemed to not exist anymore. In the dark, people looked at one another with apprehension.
“Are you crazy?” indulged a woman somewhere in the room. “We won’t go out there for a random girl.”
“You won’t need to get out. All I need is enough people to help use the unused steel plates to cover my car. It doesn’t need to be a perfect job. It just needs to cover enough.”
The room fell silent once again, but not for long.
“Alright soldier boy,” said the conspiratorial man Eric spoke with earlier, “give me plans and whatever, I’ll do what I can.”
No one else said a single word, so that would have to be it. Eric, Mark, the doctor, and Laura's father began to work, lifting the unused plates and placing them around the car.
It wasn’t easy, and the constant eyes of people walking around, observing them, made things even harder, the sense of judgment was constant.
“Do they think we are crazy?” Eric thought multiple times.
As the group tried to use hopes to tie a side plate to the plate going above the car, someone appeared, a young gentleman.
“I’m good at tying hopes, I used to have a sailing boat.” the young man said, helping Mark with it.
Some of the cars turned their lights on, and others began to move, giving the room as much space as it was necessary to work while keeping the place as bright as possible.
Soon, a group of girls came by and helped Eric lift another plate, this time, atop the engine compartment.
Another woman approached, offering coffee and sandwiches for all those working in the car, and before he knew it, some of the constructors were helping to weld the plates over the windows.
People just came around, joining slowly, and soon, most were there, building the vehicle to an impossible task.
And before they knew it, it was done… kind of. The windows were fully covered, and so were all the top sections of the car. The sides had plates attached to hopes to the top plate over the roof, the hopes themselves hid as much as possible inside steel tubes. This allowed the doors to open as the side plates could be lifted upwards. Still, parts of the side section continued to be visible, and so did the wheels. Not to mention the weight gain all over the board.
It would have to be done with it though. Time was of the essence, and they had very little of it.
“The keys,” demanded Eric from Mark.
“What? Are you implying you want to go alone?”
“I can’t put your life -”
“Oh shut it, we’re stuck together mate,” he finished, proceeding to the driver's seat.
Eric helped Laura’s father put the girl in, and a couple of minutes later, a young blond woman approached the car with a little boy in tow.
“You’re a brave girl, Laura, daddy will take care of you ok?”
“Mom, I… shouldn't…”
“Now it's not the time for it darling, I’ll stay here with Will, be brave for us ok?”
“Alright,” Laura said, her voice so low you, similar to a whisper to oneself.
“Thank you, sir,” said the mother to Eric; “I don’t even know how to repay you.”
“Well, if we survive, it will be enough payment.”
The garage shuttle slowly opened and the hell outside slowly revealed itself. The whole world burned under green flames falling from above, the trees melted as every drop of water carrying the dust down met the branches, the leaves, and trunks, and then proceeded to damage the floor, opening holes in the asphalt with such an ease it seemed impossible,
“If you want, I can drive by myself and -” said Laura’s father.
“Don’t worry, I’m not afraid of hell” said Eric before getting into the car.
---
For the third time, the car smashed into something located on the sides of the road. Being incapable of seeing what lay ahead and relying on a GPS showing no position at all but just a map of the area, it was almost impossible to avoid any type of damage to the car.
Worse yet, two tires had already exploded, and the car’s front kept in contact with the floor, the weight being too much for it to sustain itself.
“Is she alright?” asked Eric.
“She’s asleep,” said the man.
“Oh, apologies, now I’ve noticed I’ve never asked for your name -”
But the front of the car passed over a puddle and completely melted in an instant, shaking the car’s interior. Second later, it collided once again against something on the sideroad.
“Damm,” exclaimed Mark. “I thought the curve was further away. I’m sorry.”
“I just hope we don’t damage the engine,” Eric said.
Another hit, this time at the front, followed by something colliding in the back. Mark lost control of the car for a second. He could hear the deformed metal where tires once had been being devoured by the floor.
“ This is madness -” Laura’s father was about to say when the right side of the right-hand plate disconnected. A leak in the welding allowed one of the ropes to be exposed.
The man stared outside as he watched a deer run in circles, the rain filled with holes and melted all of its insides.
Still attached to the car by a rope at the front, the plate swung around like an open door, smashing into anything lying around, such as tree trunks that fell over and were unmelted.
“You have to set the plate free, we are quite close now,” Mark quickly mentioned.
Eric quickly opened the window, looking for a way to detach the other rope.
“Maybe you should stop the car so -”
But it was too late, the car entered into a nosedive down a hill. The hanging plate smashed right into a melted car trapped in a hole in the middle of the decline and came swinging back against the car’s right side.
The impact sent the car into a spin, turning its front to the right. Mark tried to turn it back around but there was no time, the car collided with a metal piece at the side of the road, sending everyone all around, but thankfully, the seatbelts were enough to prevent any major injuries.
“I don’t see a way to untie this, the other hope is well trapped in the welded tube” mentioned Eric.
Mark pulled the radio out of the socket.
“Eason base, do you copy?” he muttered into it in desperation as the rain started to melt the exposed section of the car.
“Eason base, do you copy??” he repeated.
“This is Eason…. are you ….? " said a voice muffled by static.
“It’s Mark Dunninger and Eric Monroe. We are a minute away from the base, stuck on the hill, could you -”
“What do you mean… I thought… at the shelter.”
“There is no time to explain, please open the gates we -”
The passenger’s door, exposed to the rain, fell out. Laura’s father quickly removed his seatbelt and moved towards the opposite section.
“Just open it!” screamed Mark pulling the car back onto the hill and giving Eric the radio.
“We can’t… it's too dangerous…” repeated the voice on the radio.
“The base,” said Mark with as much calm as he could collect, “is right at the end of the hill. I’ll drive straight to it.”
“But…”
“No buts, we are here now. Hold tight, strap, do whatever you want, we are going down!”
The car began to gain speed as it went down the slope, with Mark correcting as much as he thought he needed for the drift added by the hanging side plate and by the tires, which at this point should be more of an abstract form than the usual circular one.
Eric held tight, the sound of the rain devouring the world surrounded him.
“Please, just fuck open the gate!” he screamed to the radio, but he had no response.
Less than a second later he collided with something that swung open. The car kept going and then smashed into something else, sliding inside the building.
The sound of the rain had moved, no longer hitting the car's roof.
“Holy shit, we did -” but Eric never finished the sentence, as a gun smashed right into his face, making him collapse.
---
Even underground the rain pursued them, leaking through cracks where it could, from the earth into the building.
But the prison cell heEric found himself in was far better than the car ride he went through.
His guns had been taken, but they gave him his notebook and pen, so during the long night, he wrote as much as he could.
“She is stable,” a soldier told the man in the cell across the room before going away.
“Is she alright Lance?” asked Eric.
“Yes, she is. Once again I apologize for putting us behind bars.”
“It was due to happen eventually, I know myself,” Eric replied. “Besides, you are also behind bars.”
“I’m not kidding, I need to find a way to repair the two of you..”
A cough came from the back of Eric’s cell. Mark lay down on the bed, with a broken arm acquired during the car crash with the gate.
“Guess I owe you one huh?” Eric said.
“So you can repay me right now,” Mark followed with a quick demand.
“Huh? How so?”
“ I have known you for four years now and you always evade the question. The book, why do you write it? Why did you abandon the farms or the chance to get into Elysium? Was it to go into those crazy car rides?”
Eric gave his friend the book and showed him the page he just wrote.
> “In the summer, when the worst thing one could think about was the incoming war, I took my son, at the time only 10 years old, to hunt with me in the nearby forest by the farm. We spent about three hours there, and then, in a single moment, as I tried to scope a deer running by, I came to notice he wasn’t there by my side.
>
> I ran like crazy, searching from him in desperation, not noticing I was getting further and further away from the farm, growing more desperate as I noticed I couldn’t recognize where I was.
>
> And then I heard him crying, and I ran, getting on what I thought at the time to be deeper and deeper into the forest. When I found him, he had fallen down into a hole, and a branch had pierced through his stomach.
>
> My heart stopped. The hole was deep for a child but not for me, and I had to remove him from there. I didn’t know where I was, I left my phone at the farm to avoid it scaring the game, and in my mind I couldn’t stop thinking “I killed my son by bringing him here.”
>
> And that was when I heard the sound of car engines rushing by at high speed nearby, and I remember the big highway that far at the back of the farm, and nearby the forest.
>
> I took my boy from the hole, noticing his bleeding. I didn’t know how to deal with a bleeding through the stomach, so I ran with him in my arms, towards the highway.
>
> Once I left the forest, I was greeted by a truck moving a tank, others caring soldiers. The war never felt so close, but at that moment I had my own battles to fight.
>
> I ran in front of a car, and begged for help. And help came, the soldiers quickly called a doctor and in no time my kid was out of danger. But that moment changed him. His admiration for the soldiers grew, becoming all that encompassed him.
>
> As soon as possible he and his sister joined the army, and as soon as they could, both were sent away, leaving me and my wife back at the farm.
>
> One day, someone knocked at the door. I opened to find my girl alone, her eyes were dead… as dead as the news she would deliver.
>
> I thought the news would be the worst thing ever, but it wasn’t. The days that followed were plagued by memories, once I looked at the room he grew up in, at the clothes he left behind, at the tv controller he’d left behind the sofa. What do I do with those lingering parts of him? Should I burn the house? The farm?
>
> The death of my son in battle led my daughter to move away without a single word, and then in the months after, my wife passed away in solitude for the loss.
>
> Not long, a meteor came, and plunged my world even further down this rabbit hole.
>
> Everyday I told myself, “what if I had not taken him to hunt?”, “what if the deer was somewhere entirely? Or had I paid more attention, would he still be here?”
>
> But soon, when I first saw the electric sky shining in all its sinful, yet heavenly glory, that somehow I noticed that such thoughts were unwanted.
>
> There is no point in knowing where the days could’ve ended, all those untold stories, lying behind unseen moments, where unnecessary thoughts. I should focus on tomorrow and on the ideas of those who were left within me.
>
> Besides, what is tomorrow, if not another unseen day, that unlike a possibility that could’ve had happened but never will, is filled with moments that can actually happen. Those days are worth thinking about.”
>
>
“So you’re following in your son's footsteps? Or paying for a favor?” Mark questioned.
“Well, you can say that. But I’m not sure yet. I’m doing what I think I have to do.”
Mark stood up slowly and looked at Lance in the cell across.
“You know you just did to him what those soldiers did to you years ago right?” pondered Mark.
“Well, that is a possibility of so many that this moment can become. For now, I’m glad his daughter is alive.”
A soldier walked by the cells.
“Well Monroe and Dunninger, I think the stupidity you guys showed us should leave scars enough to ensure it won’t repeat again, correct?”
The two quickly stood up, got into position, and saluted the man, even though Mark could properly do it with his arm.
“I’ll be assigning you two to a familiar mission this time around. Elysium-2 is about to be deployed, and you should be there, just like with the first one. I’ll give you more details when we fill out the paperwork to remove you two from the cell. At ease, soldiers.”
The man left the room, and Eric heard Lance calling him from the other cell.
“You guys are going to Elysium-2, right? Could I tag along? I want to see if I can get my family inside it.”
Excerpt from the book “Echoes of…” by Eric Monroe, Chapter 15: “Echoes of Unseen Days."
---
As soon as the chapter was over, the book fell over Kaidan’s face, the boat rocking around as much as the car ride he had just read about.
Lots of thoughts crossed Kaidan’s mind, but he tried to avoid the section about Eric’s son. It was too soon to think about it. Instead, he focused on a detail he had never noticed or heard about before…
The conspiracy surrounding the Pleor origins, as a weapon rather than coming from outer space. History classes never covered that.
What it did cover was the war that would happen years later, and shape the world as it is. A war whose final battlegrounds he walked over, in Uroa’s island, by the prototype Tower.
But that was a long time ago, at least two centuries, give it or take.
Kaidan collected the Ring set that once belonged to Uroa. A string had snapped, but it was useful for training.
“I need to find someone who can fully explain how those works.” he thought, as he remembered his failed attempts at practicing with it during the voyage that had now taken four days.
He got out of his run and moved about the underdecks of the Klonoa. They were empty, most likely because Ayane would’ve had to watch over Tom as he is always seasick.
When he opened the door to the open deck, he noticed the rocking boat wasn’t the only similarity with Eric’s story, as a green hue tainted the dark sky.
A Blight Storm was coming.