It Starts in Charlotte

by Cloud Quake

Chapter Two

Black, everything is black. I am still self aware but I can't see, hear, or feel anything. At least a million questions are running themselves through my head in a loop at a hundred and ten miles an hour; how did this happen? Did this happen to anyone else? What if this was an attack of some sort? Would my family be okay all the way out in Oregon? Am I dead? I somehow manage to calm myself down and think with at least some logic, but what the hell am I supposed to do when I can't do anything? I think on the topic for several minutes to prevent the whirlwind of questions from entering my mind again when I see the black fade into a shade of deep red, alternating to shades of orange and yellow afterwards. After what feels like several minutes I can make the colors out to be fire, and after several more minutes I can make out the details of my car, upside-down. Great, I can see, but I can't feel a thing so how the hell am I supposed to get out of this damn car?! The fire is now visibly coming from under the hood of my car so I need to think of a plan to get out of here and fast. I decide the best course of action is to frantically pull and tug until the seat belt gives out, luckily it only takes about thirty seconds. Now that I'm down from that death trap of sorts I start to pull myself out of the car and onto the pavement. For some reason this is a very difficult task but with a bit more effort I manage to get myself completely out of the car and onto the pavement where I lie on my stomach.

I start moving around all my body parts to get a feel for what could possibly be broken. After a few seconds of this I find no pain coming from any movements I make, something feels a little off though; no, something feels a lot off. I turn my head around to see dark blue fur, two wings, hooves, and a dark yellow tail. I turn my head back around to see another pair of dark blue hooves greet me. At this moment I realize something critical; I can't hear anything. I can't hear other voices or the sound of other cars or the sound of birds or the sound of airplanes or helicopters flying above. I CAN'T HEAR ANYTHING, GOD HELP ME I CAN'T FUCKING HEAR ANYTHING. I scream it out to the world around me until I pass out again.

A warm blast of air rushes over me, causing to jerk upright but immediately fall right on my ass again when I realize that I have hooves now. I turn around to see what could have caused the blast of air only to find that my car had exploded. I then realize something else, I CAN hear. I really wish I couldn't hear, the only sounds are flames and screaming with the occasional explosion ringing out. I manage to block out the sounds and take a look at my surrounds as a whole; I'm still on the interstate right outside of uptown Charlotte, my car is surrounded by hundreds of other cars that had people in them trying to go about their daily lives, half of those people are undoubtedly dead. I myself have somehow turned into a pegasus/pony looking creature with four hooves, a tail, and wings. Now I have to worry about how I'm going to stand up and get off this interstate before another car explodes and kills me. I stand up only to fall back down several times before eventually finding balance, now for walking... Front left forward, front right forward... fall. Front left forward, back right forward... fall. I'm obviously over thinking this; I stand back up and try something that sounds ridiculous to head, but makes sense only because there are so many more ridiculous things that have happened already. I look straight ahead and tell myself that I am walking, thinking where I want to walk, and telling my brain to make me walk in that direction; sure enough I find myself walking. With that out of the way I decide to walk down the outskirts of the interstate in no purposeful direction for the sole reasons of walking, I needed a way to let the events of today sink in a little bit without causing a panic attack that would knock me unconscious.

The panic attack never sets in but as I walk I see some pretty gruesome things. A tractor trailer is flipped over on its side, crushing a small four door sedan completely underneath the trailer that has boxes of electronics falling out of it. Another mile or so down the road I come across the burning skeleton of an oil tanker that exploded, taking out all the cars within a hundred feet of it and practically destroying a massive chunk of the road. I saw others too, other human beings that had turned into these pony looking things. I ignored all of them, interacting would have only caused problems for myself. Some screamed, some cried, some struggled, and others just stood or sat there silently. Under normal circumstances I would have helped them, talked to them, interacted, but these were not normal circumstances. Who knows how many people turned, was it just Charlotte? The state? The country? The world?! I come out of my thoughts as I hear a loud roar in my ears, I look around, it's definitely not coming from ground level. I look to the sky and see it, a Boeing 747 airliner coming down at a rather rapid rate; it looked to be on a course that would send it straight into the center of uptown, which was still about ten miles from my location. The plane drops at an increasing speed until it makes contact at what I guess to be the fiftieth floor of the Bank of America building, causing a massive explosion as the hundreds of gallons of jet fuel in the plane ignite. All I can do is stand here and watch it burn as the structure of the building itself melts from the extreme heat. I see small, colorful bodies hurl themselves from the windows of the upper floors of the building. Several minutes pass and I continue to stand and watch as the tallest building on the Charlotte skyline falls to the ground, leaving a massive cloud of dust in its place.

The situation could be described as a perfect example of shock and awe; I've pretty much lost all hope of returning to a sense of normality after seeing that building fall. I'm suddenly shocked out of my state of despair when a hoof plants itself on my shoulder and a voice reaches my ears.

Author's Note:

I'm tempted to include the dark or sad tags in the story since this chapter was more on the dark side, but it should be the only chapter like it so I'll hold off on doing that unless told otherwise.

Comments

[Grey Warden]

dark maybe but not sad.

[Yuuka]

<3ing this so far, keep up the amazing work. And it is so too sad >.>

[Azurus]

i276.photobucket.com/albums/kk37/darksithlord_2008/funny12/mother-of-god.gif

[Firebirdbtops]

That does not sound pleasant.

[aponyforthebooks]

Great job on this chapter. What you have written here is what would happen in real life. Maybe not the jet plane taking so long to crash, but it could have been on auto pilot when everyone went pony and when the pilots tried to take it off they did not have the body straight to keep it up in the air.
Just my guest on what happen.

[ultrasolarflare]

that is quite frightning