Dawn of a New Age, Part 3

This is the part three of the fiction I wrote for my new supers campaign. Over the previous two days I’ve published the first two installments. This is something new for me; I’m sharing this with the readership of the blog at the same time I’m showing it to my players. I figured it would be a great way to engage them in the blog as well as share with all of you what I’ve been working on.

I really hope some of you enjoy this (specially my players), I’ve had a lot of fun writing it. If you like it, be sure to come around tomorrow for the next part. And now on to part three:

Dawn of a New Age, Part 3

March 16^th, 2011

2:43 PM

Deputy Carlyle exited the cruiser and double checked the address. He was in front of 23 Tomkins Road. The house was relatively new, part of the development Little Heidell had seen in recent years. Of course all that had stopped when the economy collapsed. He looked down the road, at last seven houses were empty; some foreclosed but the majority never lived in. Some showed signs of break-ins. He made a mental note to talk with Sheriff Hogan they would need to patrol this street.

Some people were leaving Little Heidell, saying there was no future here, but not deputy Carlyle, this was his home, and he’d be dammed if he left. It was peaceful and quiet and there were none of the dangers of the big cities. Crime, terrorism and things like what happened last Monday. While the big cities had fallen into chaos for a couple of hours, sometimes more, following the “communications blackout” (what the State Trooper had called it during the debriefing); in Little Heidell the traffic
light in Main Street had stopped working and old man Jenkins had crashed his car into Sue Ellen’s fence. No major disaster, the train had derailed some miles off town but it was mostly cargo and no one was
hurt. Deputy Carlyle loved living in a quiet little town.

He knocked on the door and a panicked woman opened it and began crying. He didn’t recognize her, one of the out-of-towners who moved here before that technology company outside of town closed. Behind her the deputy could see the packed and labeled boxes. They were moving…
Quitters! He instantly disliked her but tried to remain professional.

“You called the Sheriff’s office ma’am?” She began to carry on, a hard to follow ramble about her husband working back east, her son finishing school here, some nonsense about gophers. Carlyle took off his sunglasses and pinched the bridge of his nose. After a deep breath he grabbed her firmly by both arms and shaking her gently said, “Ma’am, you are making no sense. Please slow down, if you want me to help you I need to at least understand you.”

The woman held in a sob, her swollen eyes locked on to his and she pleaded, “Please help me they’ve taken my son!” Carlyle became alarmed, a kidnapping, he was going for his radio when the woman spoke again and he stopped. “Could you repeat that?” The woman inhaled and repeated her story, “My son, the underground people took him, they’ve been digging on the basement before, but now they took Richie!” Carlyle let go of his radio and, despite his best effort, smirked.

“Look here ma’am, if your son ran away or is at a friend’s you cannot call the Sheriff, let alone make up a story like this.” The woman went off, hysterically pounding on Deputy Carlyle’s chest, insulting him,
and he was fed up. He grabbed her arm, pushed her against the wall and subdued her. “Ma’am I’m placing you under arrest for assaulting an officer.” She kicked and screamed and he half pushed, half dragged her to the cruiser. Some neighbors stood on their lawns, looking at the spectacle. He placed her on the back seat and sobbing she begged him, “Look at the living room, please look at the living room…”

Carlyle closed the car door and was about to call it in when he looked at the house. It looked so ominous that he believed her for a moment. He couldn’t put his finger on it but something was amiss. Something had definitely happened here. Would this woman be capable of hurting her son? Was the son wounded or maybe worse? He looked to the crazy lady on the back of his cruiser; he locked it and marched back in.

Calling out to anyone in the house Deputy Carlyle made his way to the living room. He stood in the entrance dumbfounded. All the curtains had been drawn, the furniture had been pushed to the walls, the center of the room was bare, only an old, faded, large rug adorned the room, but it looked funny. He tried the light on a nearby wall but there seem to be no electricity in the room. Carlyle realized the rug was drooping on its center, he grabbed one edge from the entrance to the room and pulled, the rug was big and heavy and when the opposite edge reached the middle of the room the rug collapse and began to fall into a hole.

Carlyle could not hold on to the rug and let go only to watch it sink into the hole in the middle of the room. From where he stood Deputy Carlyle could not see it well, it opened through the wooden floor and he could see the earth piled up on the edges. Taking out his gun he began to approach the gap in the floor. It was large; big enough to fit a car, wherever it opened to it was not the basement. The hole was a gapping maw; the rug was nowhere to be seen. He could only see a few feet inside; he reached for his flashlight and shone it down the hole.

Dianne Marshall rocked back and forth on the back seat of the cruiser, she could not sit properly and her arms hurt. Neighbors were staring, but she didn’t care, she was a distraught mother. Her son had warned her, about the sound in the walls, about the underground people, she had dismissed this as another of his delusions. The doctors had diagnosed schizophrenia last year, but he’d been doing so much better with the medication.

She felt about to cry when the scream paralyzed her. She looked out the window and could tell it came from the house. The officer screamed in agonizing pain and then it trailed off, not stopping, he kept on screaming, but it faded and became muffled as if he was being dragged off. It stopped and Dianna strained from her awkward sitting in the back of the cruiser to see what was happening. And then she saw it. Someone peeked out from behind the curtains in her living room window and she began to cry again.

©Roberto Micheri, 2010. All rights reserved.