Grace, in her invisible cocoon, didn't know how long she was suspended up in the air looking down at the raging sand storm destroy the city of Las Vegas. The horror of all the dead overwhelmed and terrified her. She was not sure why she was chosen to be a survivor. Nothing made sensed to her. She recalled from the news on her radio saying the weather was going to be hot with no signs of storms or even clouds. The world had changed in a blink of an eye and she was here to witness the beginning of the end. She felt something in the pocket of her work uniform. It was her cell phone. She laughed and took it out, but didn't get any reception. Grace tried the Internet and couldn't get a signal. Everything was dead.

She noticed the sand storm was lessening and she saw the tops of the building and streets. Most of the casinos and structures were almost obliterated, covered in sand, and she thought she was not in Las Vegas at all but an odd land where humanity had disappeared from the face of the earth. Her bubble started to move down to the ground.

She hovered over the top of the Statue of Liberty, covered in tan sand. She saw the top of the flaming torch and parts of the other buildings of the New York New York Casino. Grace always looked up to the tops of the casino marveling how beautiful it was, but now everything was an empty husk of its former self. Her feet touched the sand. The storm had dispersed, leaving a clear sky. Before her, she saw an alien landscape. Tops of buildings punctured the ground, broken and shattered. She then saw the bodies everywhere in various death poses. Some were bloodied pulps, with only a hand or a leg sticking out of the sand.

She thought she was standing in a vast cemetery and she was the only living person left, but then she heard somebody crying. It was a man, a few feet from here. He was bruised and bloodied, but alive.

Grace started walking to him. Her bubble had disappeared as soon as her feet touched the ground and she was free to move. The man saw her and held up his hand to stop her. His eyes were wide with pain. Grace didn't know what to do. She kept moving toward him. Just seeing somebody alive in this carnage made her want to help. The man knelt to the ground and his body started to contort. He flung himself into the air and fell onto his back. He was making an odd noise. Then he said something over and over again.

"Grog, grog."

His body grew larger and feathers sprouted from his body. His face also changed, a large beak replaced his nose and his eyes became smaller. In a matter of seconds, the man changed into a large winged avian creature, looking like a cross between a large vulture and a hawk. The creature said, "Grog, grog," but it did not sound like a human, but a bird.

The avian creature spread its wings and brushed the sand off itself. It screeched, and shot itself at her. Grace was stunned and held her hands out to protect herself. A wall of sand shot up, creating a protective barrier. The creature hit the wall with a loud crunch, but she could hear it trying to get through. Suddenly she saw the large bird fly into the sky, circling her several times and trying to attack her again. She lifted her hands up and sand shot upwards and hit the creature.

Grace saw the bird veer off to the left. It looked at her and squawked loudly. She heard the sound of Grog, mixed with a large squawk. Another voice joined the first creature and Grace turned around. Several of the dead bodies rose from where they were sitting and eyed her. She saw malice in their eyes. One old lady transformed into a large orange cat with yellow glowing eyes. It growled and padded closer to her. The flying bird answered the cat's growl and both creatures launched themselves at her.

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Grace held out both of her hands and pointed at the creatures, but instead of sand, large boulders and pieces of concrete came out from the ground and hit them. The bird turned to the side at the last second.

Grace back-peddled, searching for another place to hide. She had killed the large cat but missed the bird. The flying creature squawked again and flew away from her.

Grace watched as the bird moved away towards the horizon. She took a deep breath. Looking around she turned, but didn't see any other Grog creatures roaming about. Her mind was on fire. She was not sure how her new powers manifested. She never had any predilection for this sort of power. Hell, she thought, people don't just change and become mutant creatures. She had always like rocks, stones and gems. She even had a small collection at home of white and black gemstones. Grace would stare at these stones for hours. She glanced at the ring on her finger. The black stone could be opal or onyx. She was not sure.

She walked down the slope, her feet sliding along the shifting sand. Her body felt strong but at the same time bruised, as if she had exercised the night before. She scanned the horizon. The clouds covered the sky, hovering over the sun. It was not warm or even hot, but cool like the desert in the night. She thought this was odd. It should be hot at this time in the summer, blazing hot like this morning. She walked away from any of the dead bodies she encountered. The hill moved steadily lower. Her feet sank deeply into the sand, her black tennis shoes becoming filled with sand and dirt.

A cold breeze peppered her with swirling sand and silt and she noticed her ring had started to glow an intense white, not burning her skin, but making her feel good, better than fine. She thought she could run a mile without breaking a sweat. Walking down the dune, she didn't notice her feet were not touching the ground anymore but were, in fact, floating. She was intently studying at her ring and didn't realize she had soared up a few feet from where she was walking.

With a short scream, she saw herself dangling in mid-air. She felt an odd sensation of being weightless, and then she realized she was controlling this. Grace focused and moved down to the ground, but before she touched it she started to move forward, still not touching but propelled forward, and she smiled. This is amazing, she thought and kept the floating sensation. It gave her stomach a flutter.

Drifting a few feet, she scanned ahead looking for some type of destination. She was not sure what she wanted to do. She should be looking for survivors or a shelter, but she felt blank from shock and didn’t know where to start. She wondered if more of the Grog creatures would attack.

Then she wondered if she had been affected by radiation, or worse, a plague, and she didn't know it. But what type of radiation would cause her to have such powers and people to morph into those creatures? Then she recalled the odd dreams of the last few weeks. Dreams that she thought were nothing, just fantasies made by the mind from events that happened during the day or years before, but what she had been dreaming was consistent.

She saw a vast underground chamber with large round structures inside it. And then something changed and she flowed past the structures into another world, an ancient metropolis. She was with three other people. She recognized one person, little Matthew from her childhood.

Yet she didn't understand how her dream related to this freak sand storm. Grace propelled herself downwards. She saw the sands had opened up, revealing the street below. It was the main strip, the street where all the casinos were located. Locals and tourist from California called it the new strip because all the newer casinos were built there. The old strip where the older casinos were housed were several miles from here.

She floated lower to the ground and saw a fake mountain now covered with sand. She knew she was in front of the casino called Treasure Island.

The front entrance was completely covered by sand and silt. The large hotel, built in the shape of an open "V" was located next to the casino. The building was now smashed from the top to the bottom with only bits of the internal structure showing to the sky.

She heard something. Somebody called her to enter the hotel.