The Sound of One...

[Exodyus]

[13:15 hours]
[Roswell, New Mexico]
[Channel 6 News]
"We're nearly one hundred and fifty miles from the intense nuclear explosion that seemed to have taken place only an hour ago. There is still no word on who or what caused this bizarre and sorrowful action - only that there are over two million people in the El Paso metro area."

The reporter shifted as if she had more to say, but trying to pass the thick lump in her throat, she said nothing more. The camera man motioned to her to continue this live feed, but with the woman standing there saying nothing, there wasn't much he could do. As he motioned to cut and turn the camera off, she sighed and spoke again.

"Forgive me. I was offering up a prayer to the millions of people who will be affected by this tremendous loss. The government is still hush-hush about this subject until a further investigation takes place, but what we do know is this - it's only a few miles from a Missile Launch Test Facility and that nothing came from outside the U.S. soil.

We'll keep you updated with more information as we find out about it.

Connie Miller, reporting live from Roswell, New Mexico."

As the camera clicked off and viewers across the nation saw the action news team that was the closest to respond and the most organized, the last visual they saw was the depressingly sad face of Connie Miller and the leveled mountains and earth miles behind her focal point.

[Exodyus]

[15:45 hours]
[El Paso, Texas]


Nothing moved, save for the rubble that fell lifelessly to the ground from its once stationary position. Not a breeze came through this now desolate area, the stillness enough to give a grown man shivers up his spine. The impact was so powerful that it literally illuminated the world, the ground, and everything around it - casting "shadows" on thick concrete walls, the ground, and other objects that managed to survive the atomic blast. A light so bright, that it burned everything around it to embody shadows forever to the earth and objects that lay strewn about. Invisible people...forever cast.

The scent of the air was stagnant - stale with the ripe smell of nothing. Wood burned to ash in an instant, concrete crumbled to dust and blown miles away by the progressive sonic shockwaves that had followed, not a flower or distinct smell in miles.

There wasn't any sounds except the rubble that was settling in place - that which manged to survive the chaos. No birds sung, no dogs barked, no sounds of cars moving along busy intersections. However, in the neighborhood where the blast impacted, where the shockwaves and destruction originaled, a sniffle was heard.

A boy stood in the very epicenter of the blast zone, the ground beneath his sneakered feet was charred pure white - like the barren salt flats. His large cerulean oculars took in the unanticipated destruction and he tried to take into account what had just happened. His eyes traced the sandy grounds and around where his home once stood - the markings of roads still somewhat intact and his house address still roughly printed on the curb.

Fearfully, he took a step forward and moved from the crystallized earth beneath him to sigh heavily. He knew... He knew what had happened was by his doing and cause, but how?

Today was his birthday... or would have been. His adoptive parents were planning on taking him to the beach, but now ... they were gone, forever in a scorched hell because of him. How...

The last time he remembered something like this, it seemed eons ago. Maybe it was, but from his recollection - he was just an infant in some distant land that he remembered his mother's voice, recalling - Ukraine...

He sighed, whispering his mother's words, "Chernobyl.."