Morning all and welcome to Tuesday. I couldn’t resist hitting the snooze alarm as many times as possible this morning so I am running a little it behind. So without further ado, lets just jump into to morning writing prompt.
This one feels like it could be the start of a story. Not the usual kind I write, but fun for a change. Definitely needs some thought first though.
Tuesday, April 13th: The crater was enormous.
The crater was enormous. He picked his way along the perimeter, showing his plastic identity badge to the security patrolling it. The crater was so big that the local two man police force had been inadequate to guard the place. The national guard was called in. at the moment no one was quite certain what to do other than call in an expert.
He was the expert.
The fact that this was a bit beyond his normal was something he was trying not to show to the world. He knew that in the darkness lurked cameras with telephoto lenses. There would no doubt be both stills and video of his visit. He fully expected to find himself featured on the local news if nothing else.
He took a deep breath and tried to project confidence as he carefully maneuvered around the debris that the meteor kicked up. Given that it came in hot, blazing across the sky and landing in a flash that any man made bomb would envy, most things he saw were burned beyond recognition. In the case of the rocks and concrete, it was inconsequential. In terms of other bits, the fire was a blessing.
This meteor didn’t land at the edge of town or even outside of town. It streaked through the sky and took out aver half of the town. It fell at night, after closing time and the small downtown was mostly locked up for the night. While once the apartments over the first floor retail were lived in; now most of them were used for storage or office space. It meant that after closing time the downtown was virtually abandoned.
He knew the town had issues with afterhours graffiti in the area. He was certain there were other isues the town considered problematic, however the timed daily abandonment of downtown kept the body count low. Only three were listed dead and another five were injured. Most of them had been near the edge of the district and were hit with flying debris.
In the shadows, he saw what he thought might have been a child’s shoe. It looked oddly melted and he recalled that there was some sort of memorabilia shop that offered bronzing of baby shoes as a service. This was a display model, nothing more. A part of him relaxed. His involvement in natural disasters usually involved study from afar, sometimes from the comfortable distance of multiple generations.
He heard a hissing sound and froze in place, his eyes scanning the rough landscape ahead of him for the source of the sound.
“Don’t worry Doc,” Someone called from ahead of him. A head wearing a fireman’s helmet appeared around a large mass that he was pretty sure had once been sidewalk. “We got all of the gas mains shut down and bled off. The fire burned up what we didn’t get out. This his is one of the water pipes. We’ve shut off the main so it won’t flood but some of the smaller pipes that didn’t heat to steam still have a few drops to give.”
Ten til Midnight 