The sphere of devastation came and went in just ten minutes, but it took a scoop of the city with it. Cleaved buildings stood with their plumbing and electrical wires exposed; the ground was a perfectly smooth crater where previously asphalt, cars and pedestrians had been. It was as if a small sun had briefly made an appearance right on the surface of the Earth, clawing away all she held, until nothing remained. The tally of the number of dead or missing would take weeks, but in the end, it would be in the tens of thousands.
Seoul, South Korea
3 November, 1000 Hrs
The cable car that took visitors up to the top of Namsan Mountain, and the huge communications tower on top of the mountain, began to shake violently, before a blast of lightning severed the cable completely.
Fifteen people sat inside the car that had nearly reached the top of its 1900-foot journey up a graduated height of 500 feet in altitude. The car plummeted 60 feet to the ground before they began to bounce and slide down the mountainside, leaving long grooves in the soil. Despite the impacts and jolts, all fifteen people survived the fall with nothing more than broken bones, multiple contusions and various cuts and scrapes.
They were the lucky ones.
As they plummeted down the mountain on one side, a sizzling globe of death appeared on the other side of the steel and concrete 777-foot tower at the summit of the mountain, chewing a hole in everything it touched. Spreading out in an arc of chaos and destruction, the unknown phenomenon scoured the northwest side of the mountain, erasing the Jung-gu and Seongdong-gu neighborhoods before imploding and leaving nothing more than a scar on the ground that stretched three miles in diameter.
Cairo, Egypt
3 November, 0300 Hrs
At three in the morning, even a behemoth like Cairo slumbers. The incessant honking of vehicle horns dies down for just a few hours. They would start again around 5 a.m., but the cacophony would be softer than usual.
The Egyptians, even in the middle of the night, were the first to mobilize military units against the phenomenon, their forces on a constant ready standby, after the recent events of Arab Spring.
The Egyptian Army managed to get an M6-2000 main battle tank on site in time to fire its M1A1 main turret conversion kit gun, with its 20 mm shells, at the pulsing, glowing target. However, as far as the Egyptians could see, the massive shells made little difference, disappearing into the energy without a trace.
Egyptian Air Force F-16 fighters arrived on scene just in time to fire a single AGM-84 Harpoon anti-ship missile at the glowing sphere that stood hurtling lightning bolts where the InterContinental Cairo Semiramis hotel had been earlier that night. But just before the missile hit, the thundering roar and crackling light winked out, leaving an eerie silence in its wake. The remaining crater quickly began to fill with the waters of the River Nile. The missile plunged under the water and detonated at the bottom of the crater, sending up a sticky geyser of mud, water and sand. Cairo was about to get a new lake-right in the middle of the city.
Los Angeles, CA
2 November, 1800 Hrs
Rush hour was still grinding away when a spherical chunk of the freeway evaporated in a ball of sizzling light and blistering beams of lightning that speared through random motorists and their pastel colored minivans and coupes. Traffic had stopped anyway, so hundreds of motorists simply abandoned their cars and ran away from the brilliant orb. Most of them eluded the lightning strikes, although a few were electrocuted as they ran. One man was hit by a glancing blow that sent him into the air across five cars, only to roll off the hood of a Ford Taurus and resume his sprint as if nothing had happened.
Brian Daly sat transfixed as he watched it all happen through the windscreen of his tan Prius. He wondered briefly if he should also get out and run, as Lightning Man was doing, but then he saw the things streaking out of the ball of light. They were drawn to the fleeing people-hunting them. Daly noticed that the creatures ignored the motorists still in their cars, so he sat as still as he could, allowing only his eyes to move as he followed the carnage.
The things were fast. Damn fast. And hard to see. They weren’t immaterial, like ghosts, but there was something strange about them. They were…indistinct, though that could also be from the fact that much of what he was seeing was in his periphery.
They were strong, too. He saw several people attacked, their limbs or heads torn away with ease. The things moved on all fours like animals, but could also stand or run on their hind legs, erect, like humans. But these things were not human. Not even close. One of the creatures raised its head, but all Daly saw was its bulbous eyes, swiveling back and forth like a chameleon’s, before it ducked away, racing after anything that moved and ignoring anything that cowered.
Daly sat transfixed and somehow remained eerily calm, as if he were watching a summer blockbuster, instead of the deaths of hundreds of rush-hour drivers. Then one of the creatures clambered atop the roof of a GMC Suburban to his left. He strained his eyes for a better view, but didn’t dare rotate his head. In his peripheral vision, he saw the thing lift its head to the sky like a wolf and howl.
The sound was devastating-a soul-cutting, sonic assault, unlike anything Daly had ever heard. The sound shook the bones inside his skin. He lost control of his bowels. His bladder let go and the saliva in his mouth began to pour down over his lower lip as if he’d been in a dentist’s chair with a few gallons of Novocain pumped into his system. Terror took hold of him. His eyes went wide. His body shook uncontrollably.
Later, after the creatures returned to the light, and the globe of lightning flickered out, leaving behind an enormous crater and thousands dead or dying, Brian Daly’s mind finally returned to some semblance of what it had been. But he would never be the same. He didn’t know what he had just seen, but he knew that local police forces would be helpless against it. Whatever those things had been, even the military would be hard-pressed to stop them. Still, he needed to tell someone what he had just seen. His brother Steven was an Army Ranger. Steve was just a captain, but he might be able to get the information to someone higher up. Daly pulled out his cell phone and called his brother as fast as his shaking fingers would allow.
Philadelphia, PA
2 November, 2100 Hrs
Moments after the carnage in the other cities began, the Liberty Bell began to glow.
Currently situated in the Liberty Bell Center, adjacent to the glass pavilion that had housed the bell from 1976 until 2003, the bell is the object of visitation by over a million tourists a year. But the facility closed to visitors at 5 p.m.. Only three security guards remained on hand when the inscription on the bell, Proclaim liberty throughout all the land unto all the inhabitants thereof, began to luminesce. One of the three guards-the one furthest from the actual 2,080-pound copper-and-tin attraction-had just enough time to slap his hand on a large red emergency alarm before the surge of light engulfed him.
Police responded quickly. They closed 6 ^th Street and set up barricades on Market and Chestnut, thinking people would be safe at that distance. They were wrong.
Sergeant Gina Martinez stepped out of her cruiser at the barricade to an unholy sight. A giant dome of intense light throwing forked spears of lightning. Thunder boomed despite the clear sky full of stars above her head. She stepped up to the edge of the park, her mouth agape at the sight. The spectacle washed out the strobing colors from her cruiser’s light bar as well as from the forty others arrayed around her on the street and up on the sidewalk.
What the hell is that? she wondered.
“Clayton,” she called to a plainclothes detective who was near her. “What is this thing? Terrorist attack?”
“Beats the hell outta me. We got an alarm on the bell. Thought it was a B amp;E or something. We’re trying to keep people out of the way of those lightnin’ bolts, but other than that, what the frig are we supposed to do? Fire Chief is on the way and the Mayor’s got the Guard coming, too. I guess we just wait and see.”
Just then, a huge bolt of lightning struck close to their position and incinerated a tall maple tree.
“Shit! That was close.” Gina ducked instinctively, but by the time she had crouched, the lightning was already
