A young man sat slumped forward in his seat, asleep, with his face suspended over a deflated airbag. Blood from his nose tinged his lips and marred his otherwise fair complexion. His hair was not too short, but only long enough to hang loosely in front, barely reaching past his dark eyebrows.
The sound of light rain was rapping against the cracked windshield, flowing across the hood of the sedan and down the thick trunk of a tree. The early rays of the morning were peeking through the forest and illuminating the interior of the vehicle.
The man's eyes opened slightly, his dark brown pupils moving listlessly before he suddenly opened his eyes completely.
His eyes snapped open with a sharp gasp for air.
The man inhaled sharply and suddenly winced in pain.
"Ugh... Feels like I've been hit by a truck..."
He gingerly moved his shoulders, arms, shifted his legs, verifying that he had all of his limbs intact. Despite severe bruising across his chest, a headache threatening to rip his head in two, and feeling like his face was used as a punching bag, he felt more or less intact.
*At least I have all my fingers and toes… And likely a concussion.*
It was then that he took stock of his surroundings, and what he saw brought a depressed look to his face. Almost halfway into the front block of his car was a tall redwood tree little over a meter in diameter.
"Well, that's just fantastic, the mighty redwood, thank you, this is just what I needed after driving for the last ten hours!"
Angrily grumbling to himself and sheepishly cursing the tree for its ascribed 'responsibility' in his misfortune, he unfastened his seat belt and reached under the steering wheel. After fumbling blindly for a moment, his hand grasped the tracking device lodged in the car diagnostic port that his insurance issued him. On it was a number to call their dispatcher to send a towing crew.
He pulled out his driver's license from his wallet. He would need it to confirm some details with the insurance company.
> DL: Y45791354
> LN: NIELSEN
> FN: VALTYR NAOKI
> DOB: 03/13/1997
> HGT: 6'-01"
> WGT: 190LB
It was early November 2019, putting Valtyr at 22 years old. Growing up so far away from the roots of his name, people often found it odd. So, to many of his friends, he often went by "Val" or even "V," with his full first name mainly showing up on formal documents. Or when his parents were angry with him.
Pulling out his smartphone, Val tried to open it so he could make the call, but the screen remained dark. Confused, he tried the buttons on the side and the home button to no avail.
*What the hell? Pretty sure I charged my phone, had it plugged into the car the entire ride...*
Not able to use his phone, he tossed it in the passenger seat, lifted the driver's door lock, and carefully stepped out of the vehicle. He was tall and reasonably fit, with a slim build, but not lanky. Not usually being much for exercise, he still managed a couple of hours each week. The ground was damp and muddy in some places, but it was not yet winter, and so the light rain did not bother him much.
He followed the trail left by his derailment and subsequent greeting with a tree probably decades older than him. Val remembered he had gone straight through a guardrail and down a steep hill into the woods, running right through a few smaller saplings on the way. The part that confused him still was that he remembered losing all power to his car just as he was turning the bend going over 60 miles an hour. The music cut out; the car powered off, and the brakes were not working correctly. It was late at night, and as soon as the headlights went out, the car plunged into complete darkness, leaving only the hair-raising sound of crunching metal and snapping branches. After that, he was not sure, but seeing the state he woke up in, the rest was clear enough.
Val was on his way back down through the Pacific Northwest after visiting some friends, opting to travel by car as the drive was not too terrible, making a small road trip out of it. He had made it back to the woods and highlands north of San Francisco before totaling the car.
"Keep a map Dad always said, wear a watch he said, what will you do if your phone dies... Ugh." Val continued to grumble about his situation as he trekked along his trail of misfortune. He had his windbreaker on over a shirt, with a pair of jeans. The only notable things were a silver bracelet and a gold pendant necklace resembling something between an anchor and a hammer.
Val carefully climbed up the hillside to where the guardrail stood broken. He took a seat against an intact section and waited. It was an interstate highway, and thousands of vehicles drove by every day. Surely someone would stop for him. An hour passed with no cars, and he was growing concerned. Judging by the sun, it must have been at least 10 AM, but before noon. With all the woods around, he could not make out much beyond a couple of hundred meters. The trees were too densely packed to make out anything but more trees between them.
"Okay... Plan A is a bust, Plan B, where the hell am I?" Val returned to his wrecked car and popped the trunk. As expected, much of it now looked like someone tossed everything in with complete disregard. Starving, he fished out his backpack, a couple of bottles of water, some beef jerky, and a folding shovel he had bought for camping. It was not much of a breakfast, but Val was not picky, occasionally opting for meals based on efficiency of nutrition. He moved around to the driver's seat while chewing on a piece of jerky and fished out a rescue knife and a lighter from the glove compartment.
As equipped as he could be, Val picked up the tracking device from his car and started hiking off into the woods. In the few years he had lived in California, he had learned the locals do not leave their prized redwoods unattended. Val trekked off in a direction that would elevate his position high enough to catch the nearest trail. Occasionally he stopped to cut a small branch off a sapling and stick it in the damp ground to mark his path.
Val paid close attention to his surroundings. There were only four things that concerned him: other hikers, mountain lions, bears, and the worst of his concerns — snakes. Other hikers would be a godsend, he could borrow a phone and call the insurance company, even let his family know he was fine. A mountain lion or a bear would be bad, but the odds were slim, so he tried to put it out of mind. Snakes were less a fear and more of a deep concern emerging from an upbringing devoid of them.
Val often tried to make the best of a situation. He was not so much an optimist as much as he was persistent, not relenting until he was entirely out of options. If nothing else, the detour on his trip was a pleasant hike through the woods. He was usually busy with work and did not make much time to get out into Nature, typically only doing so by relentless invitations from friends.
"I must at least be near Muir Woods... Considering the density of the Redwood trees here that should at least put me within 5 miles of a town."
After an hour hiking through the woods, he came upon what looked to be the start of a hiker's trail leading up a ridge. Feeling much more hopeful about his situation, he quickened his pace, hoping to find other hikers, or even a lodge and rest area. Following the trail, Val saw some profoundly concerning things. He had found a large wooden lodge, or the ruins of it. The lodge and a few surrounding trees had burned down, and the roof had collapsed. There did not seem to be anyone around, alive or otherwise.
Inspecting the interior of the lodge did not yield any findings either. It looked to be a rest area of some sort, with a scorched reception desk inside. The most shocking part was there was a warmth coming from the remains. Whenever this place burned down, it happened recently. Val pulled out his shovel and carefully used it to pick apart the wreckage. After some searching, he found something of interest. A few pieces of the roof had collapsed in a pile, and the wood was still smoldering. Glowing red embers ran along the charcoal in smoldering veins.
Picking apart the pile with his shovel, Val uncovered a strange, seemingly translucent stone. The stone was glowing with a red-orange hue. From a few feet away, he could feel the heat as if standing in front of an oven.
*Some kind of metal that baked in this fire? I can probably cool it off in the rain and mud.* Val wracked his brain for ideas of what to make of this object.
Thinking he would at least be of some help to the park service or firefighters who came after him, he gingerly scooped up the stone and brought it outside. But after dumping it on the ground, his brows narrowed in confusion. The stone scorched the soil. Steam and smoke rose from the surface, but even after a few minutes, the stone seemed just as hot as he found it.
Feeling the warmth from the stone, Val suddenly realized that despite the injuries he sustained in the crash, he had felt considerably better than he did earlier. Inspecting the bruises on his chest, he noticed that already some darker purple areas started fading, turning lighter. They still looked awful, but at least it looked worse than it felt now.
Dismissing the ever-burning stone, Val resumed his goal of finding out where he was. He found a sign displaying a map and some vending machines on the side of the lodge. According to the map, he was somewhere about 6 miles north of the Golden Gate bridge. Even if he had to walk the whole way, it would take him a couple of hours at most. He also found a lookout point on the map, from it he could see San Francisco and the rest of the Bay. Accessing a phone was still his priority, and moving too far from his car would be a problem. Since it was only a 20-minute trek, he decided his next move.
As he headed out on the trail, the ground started trembling. From the woods, he could hear rustling and the panicked cries of birds as they took to the skies. Val dashed to the open clearing in front of the lodge and hunkered down. In the distance, he could hear something crashing. From the sound, he assumed it was some trees or perhaps a small landslide, but not a car or other man-made object. After a few minutes, the shaking stopped, but Val was still on high alert.
Considering the possibility of aftershocks, he had to be cautious, but with everything that happened in the last 24 hours, he had a list of unanswered questions. Despite the concern, he decided quickened his pace to the lookout point, moving at almost a jog.
Val suddenly stopped along the trail.
*Wind is coming in my direction. I'm moving away from the lodge, but why do I still smell so much smoke in the air...?* His brows knitted together, trying to find the meaning behind the situation. Despite moving away from the ruined lodge, the air still looked hazy, and the smell reminded him of the aftermath of wildfires. With all the trees around, he could not see any signs of smoke. However, with the smell of smoke permeating his entire surroundings, there must have been a massive blaze in the distance.
*Something isn't right, no cars on the road, no one at the lodge, an earthquake violent enough to topple trees and collapse hillsides? And now signs of a massive fire?* He hurriedly resumed his pace towards the lookout.
Fortunately, the rest of the trail was intact, being well developed and wide enough for a car to drive most of the way. Almost out of breath from his brisk pace uphill, Val reached the lookout area. A concrete bench lay toppled over in a clearing large enough to fit a few dozen people. A fixed lookout binocular stood on the ledge facing out towards the city. Taking a few steps towards it, Val froze. Shock and a tinge of horror replaced his sense of fatigue as his eyes widened in disbelief.
"Wha — What...? How...? What the fuck happened?!" Val's voice almost rose to a shout.
In the distance, beyond the trees, enormous red steel beams jutted crookedly out of the bay, half-submerged with long steel cables hanging into the water.
Past the crimson wreckage, partially shrouded by fog and smoke, where the city of San Francisco once stood was little else but destroyed buildings, toppled skyscrapers, and collapsed highways. The entire city, where once stood a gilded hub of art and technology, was a broken hellscape. Shipping tankers lay beached on the shores or capsized in their harbors, remains of boats in every variety littered the bay. It was as if a mountain-sized wrecking ball swung through the city until nothing worth mention was left standing.
Unable to believe his eyes, an overwhelming sense of fatigue rushed over him. Val stumbled onto the ground, sitting against the toppled bench. A rare moment for him, he was at a complete loss for how to digest this information or what he might do.
A dozen meters behind him, in the bushes, a pair of muddy yellow eyes full of killing intent glared at Val.
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