For the second time in thirty years, the entire world has fallen asleep...
Thirty years after the Greymen caused the decimation of her people, high school drop out Rain Collins spends her days learning to pickpocket and hold her booze. Yet she long...
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Days passed and none of the crew stirred. On the outside, they were peaceful. On the inside, each man was fighting a war that he would be hard-pressed to win.
"Hello?" Peterson called out. He was surrounded by a blackness deeper than space. "Is anybody there?"
"Hello, Toby." A disembodied voice cut through the darkness, a familiar voice.
"Dad?" He turned to see his father's thick frame, his face draped in shadow. Portraits of roosters, statues of hens, and plates decorated with various poultry surrounded him. He was sitting in the kitchen of his childhood home.
"We need to talk." Peterson's father was stern.
Peterson stepped out of the darkness and into the kitchen. "Yes, Dad?"
Peterson's father stood several feet taller than his son and draped in shadow. "Have you cleaned your room?"
Heat rose up Peterson's neck and face. His father had asked him to tidy up his room the last time that they spoke. "Sorry, Daddy." Peterson blushed, averting his eyes from his father's piercing gaze.
A high-pitched cackle burst forth from the looming figure. Peterson looked up as the light caught his father's face. It was horribly mangled. Bloody tire tracks adorned his left check, while the right side of his face was completely flattened. "You should have listened to your father."
A childlike shriek came from Peterson's lips. He made to run, but found his legs too short to carry him. He toppled over and frantically crawled on stubby limbs.
***
Cool, white light carried Wilson upward. He felt calm and peaceful in the radiance. Before him lay a world of colorful clouds sprinkled with stardust, swirling and dancing while he hung in the air, watching.
"Wilson?" said an official-looking man, hovering in the clouds.
"Yep." Wilson lazily nodded from atop his beam of light, content to be among the stars.
A great flash and a thunderous clap surrounded him. The beautiful light that carried him disappeared. He fell down, down, down through the heavens, landing with a thud on the hard earth. But this was not Wilson's home, nor was it Dawn. The ground was ragged and red, stained with blood and ash. Somehow, he knew that there was no life anywhere. The nightmare landscape stretched endlessly around him.
"Commander Wilson?" He spun to find himself facing the official looking man from the clouds. The man wore military attire and looked something like his father, something like the current president, and mostly like Wilson himself.
Wilson nodded at the man.
"Pleased to finally meet you." The man smiled warmly.
Wilson forced himself to his feet. "You've heard of me?"
