“Oh my God,” Finch said. “That is amazing. That really is amazing.”
“It is,” Nate stated. “Although I’m pretty sure there was a shorter way to say it.”
Rey was going to say something but looked beyond Nate.
Tucker and Sam were returning, walking at a quick pace to the camp.
Finch stood. “Everything alright?” he asked.
“Yeah.” Tucker nodded. “It’s been an eventful evening.”
“It has,” Finch said. “Rey just told us she figured out when we are. In a pretty impressive way, too.”
“From a loaf of bread,” Rey said. “We’re seventy-five years post-Omni.”
“Wow, really?” Tucker asked. “Makes what we found even more disheartening.”
“What did you find?” Finch questioned.
Again, Tucker looked at Sam.
Sam answered, “We found out…what happened in this town.”
<><><><>
“If we take the solar buggy,” Finch said, “we’re not going to be able to go to the farm tomorrow. It will use all the power and we’ll spend the day recharging.”
“One more day won’t hurt,” Tucker replied. “The farm will still be there, it gives us time to figure things out here, and still time to catch the Androski. By the size of it, it’s not closing soon.”
Finch asked, “Is it that far to walk?”
“We were gone two hours,” Tucker replied. “One lead led to another.”
“I’m not going to like where this is going, am I?” Finch questioned.
“It gives answers,” Tucker replied. “But not all.”
Before all five of them loaded into the buggy, Tucker and Sam retrieved the larger version of their pocket LED lights, both eighteen inches wide.
Sam attached one to the top of the buggy. It lit up the road better than any headlight system could do.
They didn’t drive far or for too long.
Tucker told them how he and Sam had just started walking when it dawned on them to check out a specific location.
Absolutely nothing they saw gave an indication to what they would find.
They drove through a residential area until they arrived and stopped at the rear entrance to the high school.
“Keep in mind it was still light when we first walked here,” Tucker explained.
“We weren’t even going to stop,” added Sam. “We walked right by it.”
“That’s when we noticed the entire area north of the school,” Tucker said. “On this side of the road…it was flattened. Gone. But it wasn’t a field and trees like we thought. There had been all kinds of buildings and stuff here. When we walked through we saw wood sticking out of the ground, chimneys, you name it.”
“We walked up for two blocks, maybe three,” Sam said. “Everything was gone. It was another block before we realized it wasn’t like a gas explosion, but that the buildings had been flattened on purpose. There is a one-block section of nothing but rubble. Knocked down and pushed aside.”
“Did you figure out why?” Finch asked.
“We did, which led us to here first.” Sam pointed to the school grounds, then drove onto the property.
Tucker leaned forward from the back seat. “At first we wondered why they didn’t tear this down.”
“They did, sort of,” Sam said. “The school buildings are all gone.”
“But not the stadium,” Tucker said.
They drove a little closer and when they did, they saw several dump trucks parked outside the stadium, along with a crane.
“Looks like they were going to tear this down,” Finch said.
“That’s what we thought too,” Tucker replied.
Sam drove directly to the gate of the stadium. “Until we went inside.”
Rey glanced at Tucker. “Why do I think I know where this is going?”
The buggy stopped and they all stepped out.
Sam left the one light on the vehicle and Tucker turned on the other, leading Finch, Rey, and Nate inside.
There was no particular smell that stood out, and it was too dark to see after they walked through the gate.
Finch felt the softness under his feet, and occasionally the snap of a twig. The ground and galleys of the stadium were overgrown.
The light was exceptionally bright but it was one directional, illuminating a good walking path and showing the opening to the actual field.
And then a few rows into the stadium seating, the light hit a wall. The wall started before the field and was at least twenty feet high.
“Fort Collins wasn’t a small town,” Sam said. “A hundred thousand or so people lived here. Not a major metropolis, but no village either.”
“So where did everyone go?” Nate asked.
“A lot right here,” Sam said.
“What were they trying to build in here?” Rey asked.
“They weren’t building anything,” Sam explained. “That’s a wall of bodies.”
Rey spun to Sam. “You’re kidding me.”
“It’s dark, but in the day you can clearly see,” Sam said. “The ones on the bottom are in bags, merely clothing of the dead now on top. Decay, time, turned the bodies into dust. The ones in the bags not exposed are just bones now.”
“Jesus.” Nate stepped forward. “Is this the whole city?”
Tucker shook his head. “No, something happened and they never finished.”
“Finished what?” Nate asked.
“Burning them,” Tucker answered. “I wish you could see right now. It’s tough but tomorrow, you can. Out where they tore down the buildings, when you get closer, you can see there are three pits. Nothing ever grew in them because they must have burned bodies in there for a while. The ground is dead.”
It wasn’t something Finch looked forward to, but knew he had to see.
Perhaps in the light of day they could discover what happened to the people of Fort Collins and maybe learn if it happened everywhere.
Was that why the world was completely grown over? Had the human race faced another extinction event that beat the planetary event to the punch? And when Planet X slid into its orbit, the damage and destruction was, in turn, just part of the evolution for Earth?
One
