Charlie sat in the wooden chair on the lodge’s porch while he cleaned his rifle. The drifting scent of the pines mixed with the musk of the gun oil, bringing a relaxed smile to his scruffy face. He took in a deep breath, letting the calm of the evening settle around him as he set the gun aside and loaded a few rounds into the magazine.
Glancing up, his grey eyes caught the last of the golden sunset that was warming the forest around him. His old, red pickup sat on his right with two elk antlers mounted on the cattle guard and several pheasant feathers hanging from the rearview mirror. Mud splatters, scratches, and sun-bleached paint told a story of its own like a mural of his time spent in the Utah outback.
He slipped the magazine into the rifle with a satisfying click, then pulled himself out of the chair with a long yawn. Turning away from the fading mountain view, he headed inside and hung his weapon on the rack beside the door. The one-room shack was crammed with a small kitchen, bed, toilet, and three large refrigerators taking up all available space aside from a tiny floor mat in the center. One screen window over the sink let in what was left of the sunlight, casting a dim, homey glow throughout the interior.
Charlie tossed his heavy boots by the side of the little bed topped with a pathetic excuse for a mattress and laid down, undisturbed by the lumps made by the old springs that were pushing up unevenly. A stool with an alarm clock was just beside his head with red numbers reading seven thirty-six PM. He shut his eyes and was snoring only a minute later.
A loud crack from outside disturbed him from his sleep, and he begrudgingly opened an eye. A bright light was coming through the window above the sink, and in the haze of half-consciousness, he noticed a vague stinging at the back of his throat.
“…What? The blasted sun is up already…? You useless clock-.” He mumbled groggily and rolled to his side to grab the faulty device, only to squint at the red numbers stating, “3:24 AM.”
Finally, his senses came to as he shook the sleep from his head and shot his gaze back to the window. The sound of muffled crackling hit him first, accompanied swiftly by the acrid sting of smoke as he gasped. The yellow glow pouring into the room danced and flashed with orange sparks swirling as a cedar branch crashed to the ground outside.
He shot out of the blankets and he swept his hand across the floor frantically searching for his boots. He snagged the rim of one and forced his foot into it, then did the same with the other as he stumbled his way to the door. Grabbing the handle and ripping it open sent a tidal wave of blistering heat and black smoke rushing into the cabin. Burying his face into the crook of his elbow and blindly grasping at the rifle hanging on the rack, he leapt down the short stairs of the porch and bolted for his truck that was dancing with reflections of the encroaching flames.
Throwing the car door open in a blur between choking coughs and chucking his rifle into the opposite seat, he clumsily flipped through the keys he’d scooped up from under the floor mat. Scrambling into the driver’s side, Charlie glanced through the windshield at blazing inferno that under-lit the sky in a hellish orange. The forest was little more than black pillars silhouetted against an opaque wall of flames while dense plumes rose for miles up the mountainside.
Jamming the key into the ignition, the old truck vigorously roared to life and shot up arcs of dirt as soon as Charlie’s foot floored the gas peddle. He took a fleeting glimpse at the shack before spinning the wheel to the right until the tires lurched against the gravel path leading down the mountain. Rocks flew behind him as he heedlessly plowed over uneven road and pitted washouts that violently yanked him around in his seat, only letting up on the gas for tight turns that would otherwise flip the truck.
Only a few dozen yards down the backwoods trail and over a river crossing, and the light from the fire no longer lit the way. Switching on his high beams, he took a moment to wipe the dripping sweat from his brow with a trembling hand. Watching through his rearview mirror, the tongues of the flames were no longer visible, just the haunting glow that stretched above the treetops remained.
His back hit the car seat and he heaved a dramatic sigh, running his hand through his grey, ash-coated hair and down the back of his neck.
“Damn! These woods never did like me much,” He glared at the trees accusingly through the side-view mirror, “But I didn’t think you’d try and barbeque me! Jessie’s goin’ to be pissed when he finds out.” He lowered his head and quietly chuckled, calming himself as he dug around in the glove compartment for his phone. Once he’d retrieved it, he flipped it open and dialed nine-one-one as steadily as he could manage.
Charlie held it to his face as it began to ring, but before anyone answered, his eyes darted up to a flash of light in the night sky. A massive ball of fire three times the size of a full moon was falling through the night sky with a vibrant trail of red following in its wake.
“What in damnation?!” Charlie yelled as an explosion within the fireball increased the diameter of the miniature sun two-fold. Blue, white, red, and yellow streaked down like water on a windowpane as they raced across the southern sky and broke into smaller pieces. A thunderous boom echoed somewhere above him, the sound vibrating into the truck’s metal frame and traveling into his bones.
“Holy hell!” He cried, rounding another tight corner with his eyes locked to the expanding light show. The reflection of eyes in his high beams bounded from out of the forest until they were directly in his path. Both feet landed on the brakes as he tried to veer away from a large animal standing in the road, but it was too little too late, and the hood of the truck crumpled.
The airbags deployed in a white smear, and for some time, his vision faded in and out of blackness while his ears rang incessantly. The throbbing head and the obnoxious blaring of the truck’s horn eventually pulled him from the fog, but it didn’t lessen the nauseating spinning of the world around him. He mustered the strength to lift the hand holding his cell, only to realize that it was no longer in his grasp. He rolled his eyes down to the swaying floor and saw its cracked screen and busted frame barely holding together.
With a pained groan, he leaned back from the steering wheel and tried to gaze out of the windows as the horizon slowly stopped rocking. A thick film of dark ichor spattered across the windshield obstructed his view, but at least the fire in his rearview wasn’t blowing down the mountain after him. A steady crosswind shifted the smoke to the north, keeping it at bay in the distance.
He tilted to his left and cracked open the door with a grunt, but recoiled when a long tendril of dark slime glopped from the roof and onto the ground in front of him. Carefully putting his weight onto his left foot, he stepped around the puddle of gore and found his balance after resting against the door for several seconds.
“Could this day get any worse?” Charlie said miserably over the sound of the horn. Grumbling something under his breath, he crouched beside the truck and popped the fuse box under the steering wheel, removing fuse after fuse until the blaring fell silent.
“Finally.” He added, sitting back down in the leather seat. Looking up, he saw that the pillars of strange fire in the sky had dimmed, but their trails through the air remained as a sliver of sunlight was beginning to break over the valley below. His brow wrinkled as he watched them continue to dissipate.
A tortured bleating call reached him from just off in the woods to the left, and without looking back, he exhaled wearily and shook his head. He gazed longingly at the valley; he could see Monticello’s faint streetlights still shining throughout the tiny town in the early dawn. His truck was crumpled and beaten, and a gash on his forehead was crusted with blood.
He climbed back into the truck, but soon crawled out again with his rifle in hand, flicking off the safety as he went. A long trail of thick blood lead him a few paces back up the road, and the heavy panting of something in the brush brought him to his accidental victim still clinging to life.
Laying on the rocks in a pool of unnaturally dark fluid was a mangled imitation of a mule deer. Deep scars marred its chest and left shoulder from the impact it had taken, but it was the left side of its balding body that drew Charlie’s widening eyes. Split from the inside out where the ribs ought to have been, were three arm-sized insectoid legs that twitched between the creature’s labored heaves. It lifted its head to the sound of Charlie’s boots stumbling back through the brush. Three eye sockets in the side of its deformed skull were filled with a gelatinous sludge as the monster blindly looked past him.
It slumped to the ground with a gurgling wheeze when Charlie’s rifle went off in his hands, putting a hole clean through the abomination’s chest.
“Oh dear God…” He said under his breath as he slowly backed away from the unholy carcass, rifle clenched firmly in his hands.
Stepping back onto the road, he scanned the surrounding depths of the trees still shadowed in the dim twilight, nearly holding his breath all the while. The hum of his truck’s engine muffled the sound of his footsteps as he quickly made his way over the potholes in the gravel and leapt into the driver’s seat, slamming the door after him.
The truck lurched forwards with an ear-piercing screech while a loud rattle shook from under the chassis, but the old truck was soon racing down the mountain once more while Charlie wiped the haze of tears from his eyes.
The thick ichor on the windshield smeared across the glass when he flicked on the wipers, clouding his view even further until the water diluted it enough to be pushed aside.
He looked back in the rearview several times, searching for hidden movement in the shadowed bows, but all that could be seen was the trail of dust he left behind.
“…Am I just losing it?” Charlie whispered to himself in a broken voice. “Seein’ fires and explosions in the sky and… and monsters?”
His eyes returned to the slime on his windows and the crumpled corner of his truck, and his expression hardened.
He reached for his shattered cell, futilely trying to turn it on before tossing it back down with annoyance and tuning the radio instead. The garbled signal stuttered for a moment until he crested the final peak in the road and entered the valley.
The static of a newscaster’s voice came through the speakers a moment later, his tone struggling to maintain professionalism, “-and the catastrophic explosion aboard the Olympic Space Station early this morning have the southern states in a frenzy. Reports of debris impacting near homes and businesses have also been described everywhere from major cities to small towns.”
“Yes, but what’s odd, Jim,” A second voice countered, “Is that these impact reports are coming from all over the country. Is that even possible? Folks in Illinois and Ohio couldn’t even see the station when it went down, so what exactly is going on here?”
“Well, we’re not sure yet. It’s only been a few hours, and we still don’t know what happened to Olympus and her crew, but it’s possible that this could have been a stray meteor shower-“
“Meteor showers don’t up and take out entire cities, Jim!” A third voice burst into the debate, “Have you seen what’s happening in New Mexico? The north side of Santa Fe is being evacuated after, quote, ‘untold hundreds were found dead on the streets.’ And-“
“While that’s certainly a tragedy,” Jim quickly interrupted, “You can’t link that to the accident, Caleb.”
Charlie’s attention was drawn outside as he passed into Monticello, staring at a row of shrubs as he came to a stoplight. Their leaves were rapidly blackening and soon began falling when a breeze rustled through them, sending dozens scattering like ash to the ground. Scanning the area also revealed countless birds littering the narrow street like dead flies.
He drove another block and spotted a roadside inn. Cars were parked out front, but it was the body on the ground that he couldn’t look away from.
“I can’t?” Caleb snapped over the radio, “What is it that you people are covering for, Jim?!”
“Lower your voice, Caleb.” The second voice rejoined.
“No, Travis, this is insane! Santa Fe, Chicago, and just now a report from Mexico- don’t cut me off! Bodies are lining the streets in cities across the country without a known cause and I’m supposed to chalk that up to mere coincidence?”
The truck came to a stop several feet from the body in the lot, and Charlie hesitantly rolled his window down. The pale face of a young woman stared back with milky white eyes and discolored veins running up her right arm. A grocery bag lay next to her with its contents scattered across the concrete. A puddle of milk from a broken carton remained as if it had just been spilled, soaking into the lace at the bottom of her short scarlet dress.
Charlie rolled the window back up and threw his left arm over his nose and mouth, then quickly switched the air conditioner to recycle as he peeled out of the lot and down the empty road. Building after building went by towards the center of town, each block littered with more bodies in various conditions. Some seemed normal enough, while other’s clothes were soaked in blood, and others still were wildly deformed, but Charlie didn’t take the time to look at the details as he raced beyond the city limits and into the desert.
The radio was silent for a moment, then Travis slowly continued, “A state of emergency has just been issued. They say the National Guard is being organized for mass evacuations. They’re telling everyone to stay indoors until further notice as the casualties are being brought in…” He stammered for a moment, then cleared his throat, “Brought in by the thousands.”
“…God help us all.”
Black Zone Reports are firsthand accounts of those that witnessed the crisis of September 13th, 2035. They typically take place within the early days before and after the impacts that shook the western hemisphere, sometimes referred to by journalists and historians as “The Day Of A Thousand Terrors/Tragedies”, the “Sleepless Year”, or simply, “9/13”. They focus on the infamous Black Zones, areas with a twenty-mile or more radius that were contaminated by the foreign particles which rained down from above after the massive Olympus International Space Station was taken out of orbit by what has been said to be a swarm of stray asteroids.