Phantom Thunder

Prolouge

Three children crouched under a tarp that had been hastily strung up in an abandoned courtyard. The sky was covered in dark grey clouds, and rain poured from the storm. Thunder rumbled through the courtyard. The streets were empty and lifeless, except for the three children.

It was a girl and two boys. The girl's stringy, blonde hair was plastered to her face. She wore leggings, a tank top and a dark hoodie, all of which were still damp. Her combat boots squelched whenever she shifted her feet. Her emerald eyes sparkled with intelligence, and her face held a sort of young beauty. She looked about eleven years old.

One of the boys crouched next to her. He was the youngest of the trio. He was slightly smaller than the girl, with brown hair and similar coloured eyes, except less like an eagle's and more like a puppy's. He wore an oversized jacket and the bottom of his jeans were ripped and soaked in mud.

The third boy was obviously his brother, and oldest of the three, maybe twelve or thirteen. He wore only a dark blue cotton t-shirt, jeans and running shoes. He was fiddling with a mess of old electronics on a small run down table they'd found in the dump only hours before. It was clear by his expression that he was focused.

"How much longer?" The girl asked. The boy didn't reply. "David," She said more insistently.

"Almost there," he replied.

He was wiring two old radios to a metal detector. Other, similar items were scattered across the table. The only thing that looked like it was worth more than a few dollars was an old, beat up laptop with seven wires plugged into it at different places. The other things appeared to have been just dumped there, but when the youngest boy reached out to touch something, David looked up and snapped at him.

"Brian! Don't touch that! Everything must stay exactly where it is."

The little boy, Brian, backed away, clearly intimidated by his brother.

For a few moments the only sound heard was the soft breathing of the three children, almost completely drowned out by the pouring of the rain. Then David grinned triumphantly. "Yes!"

He pushed a button and the radio came to life, but the only sound it produced was a static buzzing. This excited the children, and they crowded around the table.

"Taylor," David said.

"Now?" The girl asked. David nodded.

Taylor reached across the table and picked up an ordinary TV remote. She opened the back and started pulling batteries out. Within seconds the remote had been broken down into a pile of different little pieces. She selected one from the pile and inserted it into the metal detector that David had half taken apart. Then, he quickly reassembled it.

They all crowded around the laptop which David powered up. It was old and slow, but they all stared, holding their breath as it turned on. Something whirred. A dial on one of David's gadgets flew from rest to max, and back to rest.

"Taylor" David said, "Open the program." He moved away so she could use the laptop. David returned to the other end of the table where he continued to fiddle with an old EMP detector that he had somehow managed to reconstruct after it had broken and been tossed out.

He frowned, and then wrenched one of the wires from the computer. The radio static silenced. Taylor continued to type, her fingers dancing rapidly across the keyboard. She slid her thumb across the mouse pad and tapped it impatiently. She had been typing strange codes and equations in a program that David had designed. The equations ran down the side of the screen. Occasionally there was a gap between one equation and the next, creating small groups.