I'm the odd man out, that much is clear. Even the ones who don't know each other still share the bond of community. I'm still on the outside, looking in. It's worth wondering whether they already know more than they're letting on. At least one person answers my question, and directs it to the others. And Deputy Hollow appears to gently be herding others toward some answers. But if I want to get to the bottom of things, I may have to do a little bit of legwork myself.
Supernatural indeed. If I need to channel the spirits of my ancestors or some such rot in order to break down a thermobaric reaction, I'd bloody well better just hang it up.
I need to be higher. Between all the people gathered around and the remnants of destruction scattered about, I just can't see what I need to see from down here. Looking around for a few moments, I find what looks like a good spot: a massing of debris, charred and twisted trunks and detritus, and not far enough from the main group to be completely out of earshot. I climb it nimbly enough, and find a roughly horizontal point on a snapped-off trunk some ten or twelve feet above the ground where I crouch to survey the area.
Hmmm. "There were multiple blast waves," I note, loud enough to be heard over the rain. "And of differing strengths." To the trained eye it is clear enough from the distribution pattern of the debris: things already leveled are flung farther than things being newly wrenched out of the ground by the blast. If we were high enough up and looking down, I imagine we'd see something like a series of rough concentric circles with distribution more and more uneven as one approached the edge. Something nags at me, but I can't quite determine what it is.
Climbing back down proves more difficult than climbing up, fighting gravity on the slick wood, but I manage to make it down without mishap. I test the ground, mud and ash, but... "Not much crystallization." Now that is unusual. Most explosives powerful enough to cause this kind of damage heat the blast area to nearly 2000 degrees Centigrade. "Unusual. From the blast alone, one would expect the temperature to be much hotter. There ought to be crystal nucleation, like you see if you dig where lightning has struck."
What could it have been? Magnesium burns much too hot, and a phosphorus reaction would probably still be potent enough to burn through our boots, rain or no rain. An explosion of natural gas? Can't rule it out, but where would the pressure have built up in all this open air? And it certainly wouldn't explain the pristine center.
I move to a spot near where the woman Syl was when I first approached, in the untouched hurricane's eye. A mystery of the first order, how such a blast happening just outside could have managed not to even flatten the... Hang on. The grass along one side is mashed, not just weighed down and sodden with water. Too widespread and evenly distributed to be the crisscrossing of foot traffic. A long, broad weight...
I drop to all fours in the sodden grass, my nose not two inches from the ground as I run my fingers through the creases and folds of the grassblades, until-- I examine the red-brown muck under my fingernails. "Someone may have been lying here. There was blood. Quite a lot of it, I should imagine. Else not even this bit would have survived the rain."
no subject
Supernatural indeed. If I need to channel the spirits of my ancestors or some such rot in order to break down a thermobaric reaction, I'd bloody well better just hang it up.
I need to be higher. Between all the people gathered around and the remnants of destruction scattered about, I just can't see what I need to see from down here. Looking around for a few moments, I find what looks like a good spot: a massing of debris, charred and twisted trunks and detritus, and not far enough from the main group to be completely out of earshot. I climb it nimbly enough, and find a roughly horizontal point on a snapped-off trunk some ten or twelve feet above the ground where I crouch to survey the area.
Hmmm. "There were multiple blast waves," I note, loud enough to be heard over the rain. "And of differing strengths." To the trained eye it is clear enough from the distribution pattern of the debris: things already leveled are flung farther than things being newly wrenched out of the ground by the blast. If we were high enough up and looking down, I imagine we'd see something like a series of rough concentric circles with distribution more and more uneven as one approached the edge. Something nags at me, but I can't quite determine what it is.
Climbing back down proves more difficult than climbing up, fighting gravity on the slick wood, but I manage to make it down without mishap. I test the ground, mud and ash, but... "Not much crystallization." Now that is unusual. Most explosives powerful enough to cause this kind of damage heat the blast area to nearly 2000 degrees Centigrade. "Unusual. From the blast alone, one would expect the temperature to be much hotter. There ought to be crystal nucleation, like you see if you dig where lightning has struck."
What could it have been? Magnesium burns much too hot, and a phosphorus reaction would probably still be potent enough to burn through our boots, rain or no rain. An explosion of natural gas? Can't rule it out, but where would the pressure have built up in all this open air? And it certainly wouldn't explain the pristine center.
I move to a spot near where the woman Syl was when I first approached, in the untouched hurricane's eye. A mystery of the first order, how such a blast happening just outside could have managed not to even flatten the... Hang on. The grass along one side is mashed, not just weighed down and sodden with water. Too widespread and evenly distributed to be the crisscrossing of foot traffic. A long, broad weight...
I drop to all fours in the sodden grass, my nose not two inches from the ground as I run my fingers through the creases and folds of the grassblades, until-- I examine the red-brown muck under my fingernails. "Someone may have been lying here. There was blood. Quite a lot of it, I should imagine. Else not even this bit would have survived the rain."