Thread: S10E04 "Ruins"
View Single Post
  #3  
Old 08-23-2014, 04:42 AM
headquarters's Avatar
headquarters headquarters is offline
Registered User
 
Join Date: Sep 2008
Location: Norways weather beaten coasts
Posts: 1,825
Default The Dust

Somewhere north of San Rafael, CA 20th August 2020 0300hrs + 17 C*

Ruins. Dust. As far as the eye could see, which wasn't very far given the time of night - the ruins of a vast suburbia. The ruins of malls and shops and offices. All covered in a fine, grey, powdered dust that kicked up with every gust of wind. With every step. It covered the debris, smoothing it over some places, concealing. It built up in small dunes behind walls and ruins where the wind deposited it. Small heaps rounded the corners and jagged shards of rubble and burnt concrete. Huge swathes of land had almost no dust. Some were covered in it. But mostly it seemed to have been sprinkled liberally on by the high altitude winds. No pattern to it would seem. But for one thing - it was everywhere here. In evey crack and nook. Under things and on top of them. Dust whirled around in the air on the smallest flow or air. It was all over.

The soldiers of the SSAB looked at eacother warily as they donned masks and respirators. Nobody knew what the stuff was. It could be the ashes of a nuked city somewhere in Asia. It could be the fallout from a big wildfire churned up by wether and deposited here. It could kill you in a few days if inhaled. It could be nothing. But surely it sprinkled over the mood of the men and soon all talk seemed a little grayer too, and the watchful eyes of the pickets where constantly irritated by small specks of something that seemed to move in the distance. Small specks on the lenses of goggles and gas masks. Soon a pale sun would shine down upon the ruin and the dust.
Reply With Quote