Search the Community

The Pine Barrens Thursday, January 4th, 2012 2:32 PM In all honesty, Cannonade could think of better places to be on a Thursday afternoon off from work. Walking down the Boardwalk, or getting a coffee and snack at the Black Petal. But here he was, flying in a helicopter over the Pine Barrens, looking for strange trees. Then again, he had to thank AEGIS for getting him out of work in the first place. They'd called him up with the assignment, and one call to the steel mill later - apparently cellulitis was the hot thing this year for sick day excuses - he had the next few days off, fully compensated. Which meant he was waiting for the other shoe to drop when Commander Grayston, who'd put him on the Nina al-Darsah job earlier in the year, swung by his apartment. "Aerial surveillance over the Barrens caught these a few days ago," Grayston had said, tossing a folder Joe's way. He'd picked it up and flipped through it. First was a photo from the sky, of a seemingly endless row of the famous pine trees of the Barrens -- only the needles were ash gray, and falling out in clumps on some trees. Next came photos from the ground, depicting the trees in more detail. The branches seemed to have grown in upon themselves, swelling until they burst or wrapping around themselves, and the trunks had turned the same pale color as the needles. A before-after picture, complete with time stamp, showed an AEGIS agent, clad in an NBC suit, taking an axe to one tree -- and felling it with one chop, as a large chunk of the base seemed to turn to dust with the impact. "...so, what, really local forest fire?" Cannonade had asked. "Budding firestarter?" "There was no chemical evidence of a forest fire -- no smoke traces, nothing. And unless this theoretical pyrokinetic could shut off his own fires, the damage would have spread farther than this. No, we've seen something like this before. Farmland around Salem, Massachusetts, 1927. Something fell onto a local settlement, spreading effects similar to the fallout of a nuclear explosion... only much more concentrated and with more mutagenic properties." "Great. Nukes. Mind telling me what this thing was?" "If we knew, we'd tell you. The phenomenon... vanished, just as quickly as it appeared. All any eyewitness could describe it as was a 'color,' similar to the Northern Lights. In any case, this seems to be the highest burst of damage from whatever it is - odds are that was the impact site - but we did find subtle evidence of a trail leading east. It's only a matter of time before this thing finds civilization." "And you want me to go in before it gets there," Cannonade had said. "All right. Mind if I make some calls?" The rest of the Liberty League had come out at the call - well, except for Ace Danger and Bombshell, who were still tied up in some sensitive business in Saudi Arabia - and, attended by more than a few AEGIS technicians, they scanned the Barrens from the air, looking for some sign of whatever was prowling through the woods, spreading blight as it went.