Into the Wastelands

Bev looked out across the wasteland and wondered if she would ever return home. Most of the planet was wasteland after the war with the alien invaders had devastated the planet with their powerful weapons, and if it hadn’t been for a miracle, they would have annihilated mankind.

The war only lasted a little over a month. The first attack came in space wiping out all communication satellites. Within twenty-four hours, space craft flitted through the sky, firing upon all major military installations. Even though they were vulnerable to our weapons, the sheer number of invaders made it impossible to stop them. Within a week, the aliens were on the ground and cleaning up pockets of resistance. Nuclear weapons were used to try and decimate the large number of alien troops, but they just kept coming, wave after wave. Humans began to retreat as the alien forces moved towards them, seemingly unstoppable.

Within three weeks, most of the surviving humans had pulled back to the far north. The aliens couldn’t function in temperatures below forty degrees, being cold-blooded reptilian creatures. Even though they were safe in the colder climates, the aliens had made known they planned on finding some way to kill all humanity; they wanted to completely annihilate the human race and take the planet for their own home. They began taking captives to study, in a search for a means of wiping out the human race.

Things couldn’t have looked worse for mankind, besides being killed outright by alien forces, many were getting sick as a result of being driven from their homes and living out in the open without proper supplies. People began to get sick with colds and influenza soon broke out and spread through the small groups of refugees. Sickness took a toll on the old, the young, and the weak, but it also was the miracle mankind needed. The aliens, exposed through people they captured, also began to get sick, only for them, influenza was lethal. Within hours of contacting the disease, they were disabled and death soon followed, often within twenty-four to thirty-six hours.

They died in great numbers and soon realized that earth was not a good place for them to be. The survivors returned to their ships and left, searching for a better planet to conquer. If they escaped the virus or took it with them no one knew, but it left hundreds of thousands of them dead. Surviving prisoners spread the word that the aliens had withdrawn and people began to move southward once again.

The short war had devastated the planet, between nuclear weapons used against the aliens and their powerful energy weapons, cities were in ruins and great expanses of land were left baron of all life, the wastelands. People had resettled over the next few months, building shelters and trying to scavenge what they could from the destroyed cities. Radio communications eventually indicated that it was the same all over the world, but the southern United States was the worst.

That’s where they had landed their ground forces and set up the base of operations. Some areas were nuked and radioactive, other areas had been stripped by the powerful energy weapons of the aliens, leaving everything from about Kansas down to northern South America one big desert wasteland.

Bev sat upon her ATV looking out at this big expanse of baron land. She had enough supplies along to last a month, maybe two if she was careful. Food was no problem, but she would have to ration her water very carefully, not being able to count on finding anything drinkable in the wastelands. She had a Geiger counter to warn of radiation, a well-stocked medical kit, and an assortment of weapons and explosives she had gathered as she traveled. She traveled alone, since no one believed her visions that came in the form of dreams.

She believed them, and doubted if she would ever return to tell anyone of they were true or not. It didn’t matter, not if she reached the structure in time. For months she had the same dream every night, visions of the wasteland and a structure hidden somewhere within its unhospitable boundaries. The structure was a small dome deep in the desert country, about a hundred feet wide and fifty feet high. It was all black, and inside it housed a weapon worse than anything she had ever thought possible.

She had seen it in the dreams, a huge clear ball floating over a shaft that went deep into the earth’s core. Inside the clear ball, four ribbed electrodes directed energy beams towards the center. Where they intersected, a bright, white fire burned with intense heat and grew stronger with each passing day. The structure was a fusion reactor powered by the sun and directing energy into the earth’s molten core, heating it up more and more. In the dream, the fusion reaction grew stronger with time until it reached a critical level and started a fusion reaction within the earth’s core itself, turning the planet into a small sun. All life would be destroyed and the planet would burn brightly for a short period of time before going nova and then burning out.

Yes, the aliens had left, but they were hell bent on destroying the inhabitants of earth and the planet itself. How much time Bev had to reach the reactor and destroy it was uncertain, but she knew it was growing shorter with each passing day. Already the earth’s temperature was increasing; not much, but enough to notice. No one believed her vision and blamed it instead on global warming speeding up as a result of the terrible war.

Bev pulled the goggles down over her eyes and hit the throttle, spewing sand and dirt into the air behind her vehicle. She had one chance, find the reactor and blow it up. She looked down at the thermos-compass she had rigged to her handlebars and followed the needle. With any luck, the instrument would detect the higher temperature of the reactor and lead her straight to it. With even more luck, she wouldn’t have to take time to go around radioactive hotspots. She had to reach her goal or die trying, there wasn’t any other choice.