After a long and grueling business meeting, the old bar owner, Katharine, rode a bus home… and halfway through the upper district, some aged view of the town greeted her… visible, for all who could see.
She'd grown accustomed to the sight, immediately singling out her now new home among the crooked of the urban landscape… It's fine, her and Margie have much to go through… but, she's pretty sure they'll make it work, somehow.
The first snow was innocent. It fell with such grace… like, peering silhouettes, each uniquely their own, as quite the gentle rain will never be seen again in the next 18 months… for every season was 6. The extremes, just as brutal as their last.
There glowed a light.
Contrast to the weather's descent, it expanded.
Bubbling monstrosities of guilt, and crimson miasma… as there, grew a chasm, a geriatric hollow… of animated memories. Pitch black sludge, mirroring tar… and though the embodiment had already grown to form a mangled abomination. Tiny, ant-like civilians of the downtown establishments could be seen fleeing from the site. Though most caught by the red cloud… frigid, crumbling into wintry ash, leaving watery remains.
What's left of them trailed toward the gathered masses.
Brought of anguish, you could make out figures within the conglomerate… monster and human.
It contracts. Imploding upon itself, like a rabid mind, leveling a great portion of the community.
Sharp beams of light shimmer and flare out, shooting up into the sky.
Clearing a void for its vast field of stars.
Like a firework. However… in place of festivity was tragedy, of which hundreds of spear-like denominators fell and faded into the cold night… superseding the gentle snow.
Perhaps… oblivious?
Youngsters and all those capable… who were yet to shift their glances downcast were left in awe of what significance it held, or for all that it mattered… as most, if not all their lives played out like a set of cords. Methodically.
Katharine could only see the wasteland unveil before the dust and debris.
Her eyes wide. Voiceless. Horror sings among the cohort.
The toll, the toll wouldn't let them pass.
The gates and flashing lights drew a clear line between the calamity, and its weeping mothers, fractured hearts, mourning relatives, torn siblings, lost children and people of the night.
'She's gone Katharine.'
'Accept it.' She mirrored her own sorrow.
'...' Shame, to its purest. Not but a child angered at the thought of something taken away.
Elsewhere
What looked to be a blue star, shot straight from the Capital.
It soared high then low, landing near the middle of the crater.
•"Commander, reinforcements are ready for touchdown. Your orders?"•
"Drop them."
•"Roger that"•
The scape was deceptively simple, a dark, washed land. Clear of any obscurity… The exception, being a heavy fog that clung to the ground, it lingered above one's knees, and only there did it dwell…but something seemed off. Carter's foot felt different? Cold?
…
That's… new.
The suit warns of impending temperatures, something that has never happened in the makings of Jude-76.
-217 degrees.
Carter would check on one of his boots, only to find corrosion starting at the metal. It might have been something other than the cold… but the readings hadn't aided in, well… the situation. Thankful, he was quick minded. The commander took initiative and activated his thrusters before it was too late. Flying just above the misty retreat.
Seeing the forces hovering down, he would warn them of the land… and hurriedly, they'd travel their ways to the center.
The goal? A slight figure of a person in the distance.
It truly was barren, no other soul in sight, and despite the medical team on standby, they had little hope of saving nonexistent survivors, and more… of incarcerating the cause of all this.
"38 meters." The fog was dense, but by now it was clear.
They've met before. Both him and that guy… but, what's this?
Norman was knelt to the ground, motionless, frozen in a maddened state. Anger prominent on his face, though… unconscious? He was.
They need to get closer… and closer they did.
His clothes were rags at this point. All but string. From the back of his neck, to his arms, and the front of his torso could be seen, ruptures of flesh, streams of nuance. That of which outlined his constitution.
Apart from the old scars scattered amongst his history, a numbered few reopened.
Thus, upon closer inspection, it was, as first glance. The medical team pronounced a bloodied man, from his eye's smallest vein, to the features of his face, ears, and body, ruined, in its totality…
However, one thing. He was sleeping, not dead.