The Impossible Man

On the small Caribbean island of Canarda, there is a legend that is so old and so powerful, people all over the world who have no ties there whatsoever and has never even been to the country, has heard of it; The legend of the Impossible Man!

In all honesty, no one knows who, or indeed what, the Impossible Man truly is or even what he looks like. What the legends do tell us though is where he comes from. Or at least it gives us a few ideas.

The first one says that at the beginning of time, after God created everything and decided to rest on the seventh day, He actually chose to rest on the island of Canarda, a place that was like a little piece of heaven on earth. The little island became so precious to the Almighty that He decided it needed to be protected and preserved for all time, so with a simple whisper of His voice, He brought a man into reality that would always and forever serve as the island's protector.

Legend has it during one of the country's worst hurricanes in the 1950s, one that was forecasted to completely ravage the country, on the shore of what is known now as Down's Bay beach, the Impossible Man appeared out of thin air from a bolt of lightning as though he was sent from Heaven. Being watched by a group of fishermen who were trying to secure their boats properly on the beach, he waded into the water as strong winds caused trees to dance dangerously and high waves lashed with all the vengeance of mother nature against the shore, and using his God given powers and secretly watched by the fishermen hidden behind some trees, actually caused the storm to split and go around the island, saving everyone.

Another, more modern version of the legend says during world war two, a Canardian soldier who had gone to fight with the Americans against the Germans was picked by Allied scientists for a super soldier program using radiation and a secret government developed chemical. It resulted in the soldier being disfigured but manifested amazing powers. The story says the man, forever shocked by his revolting appearance, returned to Canarda to live his life in isolation. But sometime after his return to the island, a German U-Boat was detected on its way to the island to attack a US military ship that was docked at one of the ports. But before the U-boat could attack, it was bombarded and destroyed by some unknown force. Remains of that very submarine can actually be found in the waters around Canarda's south coast.

It doesn't really matter which of the countless legends of the Impossible Man goes around. It doesn't even matter whether or not people actually believe in him, but almost everyone in Canarda and millions of people around the world can admit that they do, for sure, know of the Legend of The Impossible Man.

* * *

I was going to die!

As hard as I had fought and as much as I wanted to live, I knew now that it was all in vain. But this kind of resolve was so strange to me because I wasn't scared, or even angry at all. I wouldn't go so far as to say I welcomed death because I was only fifteen years old and as my parents always told me, I had my whole life ahead of me. I would've preferred to live if I had the choice. But that was the issue, the problem I couldn't get past. I didn't have the choice. I was trapped, cornered and this ten-foot tall, fifteen foot long, bizarre looking creature was going to kill me.

I didn't want to die, but after all the death I'd seen for the day, my will to fight was gone.

I didn't want to die. I wouldn't say I welcomed death, but as the creature growled at me while getting ever closer, blood dripping into my mouth from a wound that was apparently on my forehead that I sustained in the accident, I accepted death.

Being about nine feet away from me now, the creature stopped growling and ripped loose a roar that sounded as though it should be coming from a gorilla instead. Then … it lunged at me with lightening quick speed. By this time, I'd already closed my eyes and in just the scope of a second, was able to appreciate the sun on my face, the breeze on my skin. Simple things I usually took for granted. Oh, how good it felt to be alive.

I had already accepted death. Tears were streaming down my cheeks as I held back sobs for everything I'd lost that day. Regardless, though, I was ready to die.

* * *

There was a strange knot in my stomach as I stood looking up at the blue-gray morning sky. It was a particularly cloudy Monday morning though there was very little chance it was going to rain, which disappointed me because the way I felt, I would have welcomed rain. Maybe if it fell hard and long enough, I would've been able to stay home from school today.

That's just how Mondays always made me feel. It wasn't the usual Monday blues because I had a long boring week ahead of me. It was because Mondays meant there was a long week of insults and teasing for me coming at school. No sixteen-year-old would ever want to look forward to that.

I was standing at the bus stop in the small country village of Charlesville, dressed in my school uniform of a white button up shirt with a red tie, long khaki-colored pants, and black shoes, with my seven-year-old brother, Andrew (his school uniform was a navy-blue short pants with a blue button up shirt). It was already six-twenty-five a.m. and we were waiting for the six-thirty bus to take us into Queenstown where I would take Andrew to his school, which was just outside of Queenstown, Canarda's capital, then I would take a bus to my school.

Our village wasn't so big, even by the standards of what constituted a small community in Canarda, especially as we lived far in the country. There were probably about one seventy buildings in the area and that included homes, a few village shops and one extremely small - I'm talking two aisles only - mini mart. And completely surrounding the village at every point was sugar cane. It grew for at least a mile in all directions around the village, which had only one main road in and out of the community and that's where the bus stop my brother and I were standing at was located, on the exact edge of our village. Directly a few feet ahead of us and around the corner where the road curved, was the cane field on both sides.

I hated it here.

Our house was, admittedly, one of the nicest houses in the village. It was a huge, green painted, two and a half story house that was located through a little walking path directly across the road from the bus stop we were at.

My mother was an architect at the biggest design firm in the country and my father was an airplane jet pilot for a small private airline. I liked to think that most other kids resented my parents' ability to give us a better than average upbringing and that's why they always picked on me, but I knew that was not even close to the truth.

They could care less about the money. It was just me. I was five foot ten, lanky looking which wasn't really that surprising considering my age, but the strangest thing about me was the fact that for a black kid, I had striking bright green eyes even though everyone else in my family had brown eyes. My mother always said they reminded her of how pretty the leaves on the trees looked after a healthy dose of rain.

That, along with the fact my first name was Walter, a name I hated because it was an old man's name in my opinion, was all the reason they needed to target me at school. Being different is something appealing when you are an adult and grown, not when you're a kid in secondary school.

And I wasn't much of a fighter either, so I never really fought off the teasing, with words or my fists.

I suddenly felt Andrew tug on my left hand which pulled me out of my deep contemplation.

"The bus is coming," He said, pointing at the big blue bus as it barreled toward us.

"Well, then you why couldn't you have stopped it yourself? I don't always have to do it," I snapped at him, pulling my hand from his as I stuck my other hand out to indicate to the bus driver to stop for us. Andrew was long since used to my sometimes sudden grouchy behavior and even now as I glanced at him, just before the bus stopped in front of us, he looked completely unscathed by it, but I still felt a little bad inside.

Only a little though. Because while I did feel bad, I wasn't necessarily wrong.

Once we got on and I paid our fares, my eyes quickly scanned the bus for seats and as I did so my heart sank. Three boys and one girl from my school where onboard this very bus, sitting in the back, but as soon as they saw me, they began to sneer in a mischievous sort of way.

At the front of the bus on both sides were five seats each facing the opposite sides rather than facing front. I would've preferred to sit up front here, where they could not cause any trouble, but Andrew had already run to two empty seats in the middle of the bus.

The bus was barely even half-filled and the seats directly in front and behind us were empty, so as soon as I sat down and my backpack was in my lap, the others had jumped to occupy the seats so we were between them.

"Good morning, Philgram," said a tall, dark skinned boy with braided hair named Josiah, from the seat in front of me. He was the popular boy at school. Everyone at school knew who he was and not even because he played some kind of sport. No, he was popular because he was good looking, because he liked being mischievous and causing trouble and getting into fights, because despite all his trouble making, he still somehow had a way of charming teachers. In other words, he was poplar for being popular. As for his three companions. I didn't know or even cared who they were, especially when they started snickering at his little remark. They were just his friends, some of the people who followed him about hoping to share in his glory days. But it was clear they knew who I was. Everyone at school did, but not in the same good way they knew Josiah. Everyone knew me as the weird one. The freak with greens eyes.

"Stop calling me that, I hate it," I retorted, intending for my voice to sound a lot more forceful than it actually did. I didn't even know how he managed to come up with that ridiculous name for me. Teasing me was something of a regular pass time for Josiah.

They clearly found my reply more funny than forceful.

"Hey, Philgram, turn around so I could see those pretty, little girl eyes of yours," The girl said from the aisle seat directly behind me. The chorus of laughter continued.

Without looking back at her I said, "Why, though? Do you like little girls?"

The fact that I even replied surprised me but it pleased me to hear it was sharp and witty enough to make the laughter stop but then I felt a sharp slap across the back of my head.

I knew it was the girl.

"What're you gonna do?" Josiah taunted with a nasty sneer on his face. "Go on, hit her back."

"OW," The girl shouted in pain, but it wasn't me that hit her. Andrew had stood up in his seat, balled his right hand into a fit and hit her on the forehead. I barely caught him in the final second, the guy in the window seat behind was about to hit Andrew but I caught his hand before he could.

"Don't hit my brother," I snarled at him as I forced him back into his seat. Both he and the girl seemed stunned by my actions, but either Josiah wasn't or he recovered from it rather quickly, because he grabbed me by my hand and forced me back into my seat as I had stood up to stop the boy behind us.

"Don't touch my friends," He spat angrily.

"Then don't touch my brother," I replied, leaning forward so I was closer to him. Andrew was about to stand up in his seat again, because he probably wanted to back me up but I used my right hand to keep him seated.

At that moment, it occurred to me that by now others in the bus knew what was going on but made no efforts to keep things civil. Great, NOW people wanted to mind their own business.

"Or what? He hit me first," The girl behind me chimed in, as she lobbied another slap across the back of my head. The force and surprise of it made my eyes water which was too bad because I didn't want them to think I was crying.

"Or I'm beating your ass." That sounded lame to me and I'm sure it sounded that way to them too, but there was no laughter this time. We were all ready for this fight. We were all on our feet, wobbling as the bus soared on the early morning roads. Strange, considering I was just thinking about how I'm not a fighter.

I was standing, facing Josiah and trying to remain balanced on the moving bus, with my heart beating so hard my vision jumped with every thud, when the girl gripped me in a headlock from behind.

"Let him go. Let him go," Andrew was screaming and struggling as the boy behind him restrained him, admittedly with as little force as possible.

"Hey, stop all that fighting," One man shouted in the bus.

"It's too early for this kind of behavior, and in public no less," A woman added.

"These school kids these days just have no respect for themselves," A third woman said, sounding upset. The other passengers were now finallyn starting to voice their disapproval but still no one moved to intervene.

"I said DO NOT TOUCH HIM," I roared, trying to throw the girl off me. The boy in the aisle seat next to Josiah looked as though he didn't know what he should do, but he didn't have to wonder long.

We all lurched forward as the bus came to a sudden stop.

"ENOUGH," Shouted the bus driver. He got up, took an audibly deep breath as though to calm himself and then walked over to us. I was a little embarrassed when the other passengers in the bus began to clap. "There will be no fighting on this bus. All of you." He pointed to Josiah and his friends. "Move. Now."

"But we didn't start this," The chubby boy next to Josiah said in a voice that reminded me of Mikey Mouse.

"I didn't ask who started it. I'm telling you to move. Two to the front. Two to the back. NOW."

Josiah looked the man up and down. The bus driver wore a blue button up shirt and black slacks. But even though his uniform was huge he still filled it. It was easy to till this was a powerful man. Not someone kids like us should be even meddling with which, for some reason, I had the impression Josiah had considered.

But, thankfully, he seemed to have come to the same conclusion as me and silently got up and went to the back of the bus without even another look and me. His friends followed suit. The girl followed him and the other two boys went to the front of the bus. After, the bus driven shot me a look, as though warning me not to cause anymore trouble, then walked back to the front, sat down and started to drive again.

I was still feeling a little ashamed about what had happened – my shirt was wrinkled now and was hanging out my pants, but I knew they were all planning to finish this when we got into town. My stomached started to rumble with fear. I looked over at Andrew. He was looking through the window, his little body shaking with anger. I bent down to pick up his red Spider-man backpack that was almost half the size of his body which had fallen to the floor. I dropped it in his lap. He then looked over at me and smiled.

I sighed. He was my younger brother yet, sometimes I wished I could be more like him.

* * *

The morning trips to town weren't usually long as it's so early that the roads are usually clear. Today was different for some reason. It took us almost twenty minutes longer to reach into town, but we finally made it.

After we arrived in town, we were held up in traffic, again, in the area of Freedom Park, literally about three minutes away from where we were to disembark. I was distracted looking through our window at nothing in particular outside when it happened. I remembered seeing on a huge clock on one of the buildings outside that it was seven-thirty a.m. when it started.

BOOM!

A huge explosion rang through the air as though a bomb had gone off. The sound was so painful that my ears felt as though little air bubbles had burst in my eardrums, sending pain shooting through my head, forcing me to clap my hands to my ears in an effort to both try to curb the pain and the block out anymore sound that could potentially follow, but that was it, there weren't any more blasts that followed, though there was a high pitched ringing in my ears after the explosion.

After a few seconds, I took down my hands and strangely enough, even though I never lost consciousness or even closed my eyes, I realized I was, somehow, lying on the floor, with bits of broken glass scattered all around me. Apparently that blast or shockwave or whatever it was seemed to have been so powerful that it threw some of the passengers out of their seats and managed to shatter some of the sturdy bus windows.

I sat up and dusted small to medium sized shards of glass off me. The ringing in my ears finally began to disappear and as it did, I found my mind and all my other senses seemed to return to normal, my brain finally started processing what was going on around me. Half the passengers had fallen to the floor of the bus; some a lot harder than me as there were people with small cuts and abrasions about their body. At the back end of the bus, two men were trying to assist someone who apparently was unlucky enough to receive a piece of glass to her left eye and there was an elderly man who was lying motionless with a younger woman crying over him and other passengers trying to help revive him.

It shocked me to see the person who had the piece of glass in their eye was the girl from our school that was sitting with Josiah, who looked like he was suffering from shock, sitting wide eyed in the high seats at the back of the bus.

I looked over towards the front of the bus, which was a lot emptier and, there, a few feet away from me, was Andrew, who was now getting to his feet looking as though he was also temporarily dazed by what happen.

I scrambled to my feet, confused as to how we got separated so far considering we were sitting together, and realizing the blast had to be powerful enough to actually throw people around in the bus, but I pushed that out my mind to rush over to him and as soon as I was standing upright, I finally started to process everything going on around, both in and out the bus. Car alarms blaring, people shouting in anger and confusion, people screaming in pain.

"Somebody call for help. Call an ambulance," One man shouted as he tended to a dazed and crying woman.

"I've been trying for the last ten minutes," Another woman responded. "But I think there's something wrong with my phone because I'm not getting any cell service."

"I don't think it's your phone," A man in a black and white business suit next to me stated as he stood up on one of the bus seats. Out the side of my eye I saw him holding up two cell phones as though he figured the higher up he could get them the more likely they were to receive some sort of service. "Both my personal and company phones aren't getting any service either. It's like something's knocked out or is blocking cellular service."

I ignored all of it and the people trying to get my attention to help with the injured and rushed over to my brother. Seeing me coming towards him, he quickly got up and darted around the two other boys who were checking a pregnant woman in front of him to run to me. He wrapped his arms around my waist as though I was somehow able to comfort him by just being there.

I didn't pull him off. He was just as much a comfort to me as I was to him.

When he pulled away, over the roar of confusion all around us, he asked me, "What's happening?"

The fear in his eyes made me feel so helpless.

Before I could respond I noticed that the noise around me had suddenly died down considerably to the point where the only voices I heard were of the people inside the bus with us. I turned to look through the shattered windows and noticed that everyone outside was looking up towards the sky, as though they were looking at something falling to the ground. I moved to position my body through a window on the left side of the bus so I could see what had grabbed everyone's attention. It would have been easier to go outside but the truth was I was too scared.

Of all the things I would have expected to see, it certainly was not this: It was a crack.

Not a plane crashing down, not a building on fire. Nothing of the sort, like what I was expecting to see. Instead, what we were all looking at was a literal crack in the sky as though there was some kind of invisible glass up there that something had smashed into. The crack itself was about one hundred feet in the air, etched into the light blue sky, about ten feet long and barely a foot wide, yet it was clearly visible to all of us. It looked like a bolt of lightning had been frozen in time.

I would like to say I was scared, but honestly, I didn't know what I felt. And I knew it was the same for everyone because everyone just continued to look up at it and stare in fascination.

Well, that wasn't necessarily true. It took a lot of effort, but I managed to pull my gaze away from the strange phenomenon and looked around Freedom Park. Some people were running away. Only a few, but there were people jumping out of their cars and running in any direction out of town as though they somehow knew this was a foreshadowing of bad things to come.

I turned my head to the right to look at the traffic in front of us. There was another huge blue public bus directly before us and even from behind I could tell it was completely packed but the back doors suddenly open and a slightly overweight woman was the first to emerge, aggressively pulling two little children that seemed to be slightly younger than Andrew behind her. She wasn't moving very fast, but she moved with desire … and fear. She was determined to get away, even if it meant attempting this on foot.

As she ran pass our bus, pulling the two frightened looking kids along, her face turned towards me, almost half my body hanging out the window now, and I saw the raw fear that was etched there. Her face, dark and plump with a big nose and circles under her eyes, became a message for me.

Run. Run now. Run far and fast.

I had to get away. Andrew and I had to run now and the only place I could think to run to was home. I turned and watched the woman and her two kids run for a few seconds then crossed to the other side of the road behind our bus.

As soon as she was out of my sight, I had moved to pull myself back into the bus to follow her lead, which was to grab my brother and find a way to get home. It was the thinking of a child, that something as delicate as a house could protect you from all the dangers of the world. But it was all I knew. Somehow getting home would keep us safe.

But before my head was back inside the bus, the air exploded with the screams of people in the streets. I didn't have to look far to see what had caused this new round of trouble. In fact, others in the bus with me finally grew curious about the events that were occurring outside that they too had now poked their heads through the windows to get a glimpse.

I was sure that I had somehow been transported to some kind of movie world, because there was no way what I was seeing could be real. No! it wasn't real. It couldn't be.

Two huge scaly claws, similar to a dinosaur's, had forced their way through the crack in the sky, gripped the edges as though they were as solid and sturdy as two big pillars, and had forced the edges of the crack apart a few feet to literally tear a hole in the sky. The clouds that were drafting past the fracture now seemed to disappear as the passed one end of the hole and reappear at the other end as though it was passing behind it. But I had watched enough television to know what I was looking at.

A rift in the fabric of reality. As unbelievable as it was, there was a hole to another … place, hanging in the sky above Queenstown in Canarda and inside that hole, after the claws had been withdrawn, was a huge yellow eye with a big black iris that peered down at us, like a kid trying to get a glimpse into a looked room by peeping through the keyhole.

I pulled myself back into the bus and a few other people followed suit. I had seen enough. I didn't know how I was going to get there, but there was no longer any question about the fact that somehow, I had to get home.

Andrew was sitting in one of the seats by himself looking around more frightened than I'd ever seen him. I went over to him and grabbed his upper arm. This was no time to be gentle.

"What're you doing," Someone shouted at me. I looked back and realized it was Josiah.

"Do you see what's happening out there? We need to get out of here, now."

"And go where?" There was panic in his voice, but not only from fear, but for longing. He wanted somewhere safe to go too, just like I did. Deep down, past my dislike for him, I felt the need to help him.

"We're going home." I looked down at Andrew. Was I seeing tears in his brown eyes? Were there tears in mine? "Our dad's a pilot. He has access to a plane so we can get out the country." I took a deep breath and lowered my voice. "You can come with us."

Before he could respond, the guy with the two cell phones, who was apparently listening closely to what I had been saying, said, "So, what about the rest of us? Huh, are you gonna leave us behind?"

Suddenly a loud, nerve racking, tearing sound rang though the air, as loud as thunder during a storm, as though someone had ripped a building sized piece of cloth right down the middle and into two. Everyone who was able to move ran either to the front of the bus to see or looked out through the windows. The crack in the sky now reached all the way to the ground, right in the middle of the road, between two cars that happened to be a few feet apart, one in front the other. This caused both drivers to try to get as far away from the anomaly as possible, the driver in front slamming down on his gas pedal and weaving his way through the traffic jam with the others blearing their horns and following suit and the cars behind following and doing the same, only reversing so that there were a flurry of cars trying to reverse around us all at once but instead of getting away, they only managed to make the things worse.

It was absolute chaos.

The rift itself was about three hundred feet ahead of us, and seemed to have touched down and had opened up in the middle of the road. And when I say opened up, I mean opened up, because the black edges of the rift had stretched apart and was now about a good ten feet wide.

People should be running, I thought to myself. And a few of them still were. But only a few. Most people had now got out of cars and buses – including ours – to get a good look at what was happening, despite the fact that we'd just seen a huge eye peeking down at us from through the cracks of that very same rift.

Yet, I could understand the fascination. It truly was scary, but it was also amazing. Appealing even. The same way how people would swim for their lives to get away from a Great White shark but would happily watch one and even enjoy the terror it inspired from the safety of a shark cage. But there was no cage here. No barrier separated us from the terror that I was sure we all knew awaited us in the deep beyond that was the misty darkness that existed inside the crack.

Suddenly, a creature emerged from the rift.

It was a huge fifty-foot-high creature with gray skin, a face like a gorilla and a long scaly body like that of a reptile. And by emerged, I mean it crawled out on all fours, its huge four legs crushing cars as it came out.

But still no one ran. Well, a few more people did. They turned and ran as though they were looking at the devil himself coming out of hell, but the majority of people simply backed away, as though they believed they were out of the creatures reached and simply just watched it in fearful fascination.

"WALTER!"

I pulled my head back into the bus in mild surprised and looked at my brother who had tears streaking down his face. "I want to go home."

It was like the sound of his voice, the urgency of his cries, pulled me back to reality. THERE WAS A MONSTER CREEPING OUT OF AN OTHERWORLDLY PORTAL IN THE STREETS.

It was as though this was ringing loudly inside my head. I didn't know if this was a hypnotic effect of the rift or just plain human stupidity that made most of us stay and watch this, but a small part of me wished Andrew had not pulled me out of it, because the fear that flooded my body now made me feel like I wanted to vomit, piss and faint all at the same time.

"You're right." I urgently told my brother. "We need to get out of here now and find a way home." My words seemed to comfort him a little and he threw his spider-man backpack, which was in his hands, on his back, as though ready for a long journey.

For the third time this morning, screams rang through the air, but the only difference was, this time hundreds of people began running away from the area in all directions. People were running between the cars, some were even running over cars, others who had bigger cars, vans, and trucks, began driving through the jam up of vehicles, knocking all in their path out of their way, even turning some upside down, while sustaining damage themselves. One particularly large SUV managed to get through a few feet of vehicles before the driver lost control and the car spun out of control and ended up through the doors of a supermarket, actually sending some people who were in the way flying and crushing others, leaving blood all around.

The creature had instantly begun attacking and eating people. As it emerged from the rift, instead of backing away like the others did, one man started to move closer to the beast, whether to get a closer look or test if it was aggressive, it was unclear. But without hesitation, the creature, without moving its huge legs, managed to extend its huge neck and grabbed the man, who began to scream, in its jaws. As the bystanders around began screaming and running, the beast snapped down on the tiny human in its mouth, not splitting him completely in two, but still instantly killing him, then swallowed him whole, with blood dripping down its month.

"Get outta my way. I've gotta got out of here, now," Two cell phone guy shouted as the majority of people in the bus began shoving their way to the doors as vehicles scraped the bus in their bid for freedom. It seemed two cell phones guy forget all about wanting to come with us.

I had gripped Andrew and pulled him closer to me as people had been shoving and pushing others out of their way just to get out. A few had even decided to just jump through the windows and run.

"What are we going to do?" I heard Josiah ask me, sounding even more panicked than Andrew and looking as though he was torn between wanting to join the others and just run, or coming with Andrew and I.

"People, just stay on the bus, we can get out of here," The driver was shouting from the front of the bus, but no one was listening, everyone was rushing for escape, abandoning those they were trying to help, trying to take the best chance to safety. Josiah's friends all gathered around and looked at him, even the girl, who now had a handkerchief tied around her eye which was dotted with blood but otherwise she seemed fine, then all shrugged and left, joining the crowds outside, but before the girl was through the doors, she stopped and looked back.

"Josiah, come on! Come with me, please. I – I don't want to die here. I don't want to die today," she said by the door, the last person to leave other than Andrew, Josiah, the bus driver who seemed to have been confused by the growing chaos around us, and I. But she didn't even wait for his response. She just bolted out and ran, with impressive speed, towards a huge bridge to our right that was packed full of people and vehicles, though we couldn't see if she made it across.

She wasn't telling him to come with her. She was apologizing for leaving her friend, I thought to myself.

"My family. I-I gotta get home. I wanna be with my family," Josiah said in an almost trance like voice. He looked outside at the chaos occurring and then back at me … and I knew he had made up his mind.

"Good luck, Walter. I really hope you make it home." And then he, too, left, sprinting through the sea of scattering people, running towards a family that, for his sake, I hoped he would see again.

There was a loud crash at the rear then the bus suddenly shook violently for a few seconds. Andrew and I were knocked to the ground, painfully, again but got up quickly this time and too our horror we saw that the bus driver too had fallen. But he had hit his neck on one of the seats, leaving his head at an odd angle.

He was dead.

There was so much noise from outside that I couldn't even hear if we were screaming. Everything happening was so disorienting, I was barely aware of what my body was doing. I think we were screaming though. I certainly felt like it.

I grabbed Andrew's hand again, angry at myself for having hesitated when we should have ran the second the thought occurred to me, and began to pull him out of the bus, leaving the body of the bus driver and the unconscious man, whom I was pretty sure was also dead, behind. I could feel Andrew was in a little pain from how tightly I was gripping his little wrist but once we were outside, people were jostling us this way and that and I couldn't allow us to be separated.

Loud ripping sounds rang through the air from all around us. The sound seemed to reach down into my heart to eat away from whatever hope I had left as tears ran down my face as our reality seemed to grow even worse.

Retracing the route the bus took to town, we rounded the same corner it took before it was blocked. But it was horrible out here too.

There was just a constant flow of people moving as far away from the center of town as possible. There was so much fear about that you could almost smell it. In fact, the air itself seemed to have a grayish tinge to it, as though it was thick with that fear.

As we ran (sadly, I was practically pulling Andrew along as he wasn't fast enough to be able to keep up with me) I almost slipped on something and quickly realized what almost made me fall was blood.

Pulling Andrew to the side of a building to stop us from being trampled while we got ourselves together, I realized that they were already lots of people already lying in the road, dead. Some had been run over by cars trying to escape, but most had been trampled to death by the stampede of frightened humans.

The blood I almost fall in belonged to a slightly overweight woman. She was almost unrecognizable as her face was so bashed in it almost looked like someone had hit her relentlessly with a hammer, but next to her were the bodies of two young children about Andrew's age, with faces and bodies just as battered as their mother's.

The frightened face of the woman who passed me while I was still on the bus a mare few minutes before flashed in my mind for half a second.

"She didn't make it," I said to myself as a sob of horror tried to force its way up my throat.

People were still pushing and bumping into my brother and me as they tried to make their escape even though we were literally pressed against the wall of a huge brown, three story building.

"We should go in here, to hide," Andrew advised, trying to pull me into the building we were resting in front. I thought it was a bad idea but then I noticed that people were actually running into tell buildings looking to hide.

"No, we can't," I shouted, pulling him back to me. "That thing is huge. It could go on a rampage and might knock some of these buildings down. We can't be inside any of them in case that happens. Andrew, we can get home. We must. Dad can get us out of here. Okay?"

Before he could respond, another shriek rang through the air. The majority of people stopped running to look around in horror at the multiple rifts opening all around us. In the sky, over the ocean. Even a few feet behind us.

I knew better now though. I had to protect my brother. I did not stop to look because I already knew what those rifts would bring – death. I knew, just like all those people who stopped running to stare knew. I started running again. I also knew that more people were going to die but I knew Andrew and I had to get home because our dad would save us. He would be able to get us out of this.

The wonderful thinking of a silly child.

In my panic I didn't even consider the possibility that my parents were already dead.

"NOOOOOO. SOMEBODY HELP ME PLEA-"

I knew better than to look back. I knew to keep my eyes straight ahead. I knew looking back was the worst thing to do … but I wanted to see. I turned my head as I ran, and unfortunately tripped over something which resulted in me pulling Andrew to the ground with me, but not before I saw a one hundred foot reptilian like creature actually chomping down on a man who had stopped moving before my eyes even fell onto the scene.

The man's legs were still dangling out of the creature's surprisingly small mouth. After the creature chewed a few times, the man's legs were finally severed from the thighs and fell to the ground.

The creature then threw a woman, who was screaming so loudly while gripped in the creature's hand that I was sure her vocal cords wouldn't last much longer, into its mouth and swallowed her whole. In fact, I swear I could see her slide down the creature's throat as the huge beast shriek and grabbed for more people.

A huge blast of pink chunky vomit flew out of my mouth so violently that it hurt. It was a good thing that none got on my clothes, because I couldn't handle the smell of vomit.

But I didn't have time to dwell on that because the sea of people didn't seem close to letting up, which was surprising because this was way more people in town then I ever expected.

It was dangerous out here.

I pulled Andrew and myself up and tried to start running but before I could someone grabbed my right arm and pulled me and Andrew towards a nearby parking lot of an apartment building, across from a beach restaurant.

"Walter, come on. I can get us out of here, but you and your brother have got to run."

A fresh new cry rang through the air. A giant, fifty-foot, four-legged spider like beast emerged from a fresh crack that opened on the beach just to our right. It didn't even bother with the people who had tried to escape the major crowds on the streets by trying to escape on the beach as it stretched over a mile long. But it did trample some of them as it ran onto the main roads where people were more heavily concentrated, crashing through buildings and sending vehicles flying as it joined its reptilian companion in the chase to consume as many humans as possible.

I had no idea how many of those beasts had popped up now, but I really didn't care. I just wanted to get away.

It was probably just under a quarter of a mile from where we left the bus to where we were now, which was in the parking lot of a huge apartment building, which had a majestic looking cathedral next to it and across from us were a bunch of restaurants and bars by the beach. The streets were still full of vehicles and people trying their hardest to get away and for the first time, I realized I could actually hear sirens ad gun shots in the distance, as though police were trying to fight these things. I honestly did not favor their chances.

I hadn't realized who had guided us here as I was looking everywhere but at his face. The way I saw it was, as long as he was human, he was safe. But now as he led us towards a red Explorer truck, I realized it was our neighbor, Anthony.

"Get in the truck, quick," He screamed, using a remote to unlock the truck.

We jumped in (I had to lift Andrew in) and as soon we were in the backseat, a young but haggard looking woman jumped into the passenger seat as soon as Anthony was behind the wheel.

"Please, just let me get a ride with you. Don't leave me here, please," She cried to Anthony, then looked back at Andrew and I with pleading eyes as though she wanted us to convince Anthony to let her come.

"Just put your seatbelt on, because there is a good chance we could crash," He shouted as the engine roared to life. He pulled off, hard, one time and the sudden force threw Andrew and I to the ground. The truck rocked and bumped as it drove over and collided with other vehicles and bodies of meat and bones that obviously weren't animals. But even at this point, the horrors of this sudden, dark, new world hadn't dulled us to the extremes people had to resort to just to ensure they lived to see another day.

Even through all of this, everyone still wanted to fight to life to see another day. Even if that day was filled with monsters and death.

"JUST GET OUT OF THE WAY," Anthony shouted as he blared the horn while the woman in the front seat screamed as I held my brother as we were both still on the floor. I felt like, at this point, it was all that I could do to comfort him. It helped comfort me too.

After a few more minutes, whether five or twenty-five, I wasn't sure, there weren't any sounds outside the truck. There was no screaming, no explosions, no roars or shrieks. No blaring sirens or gun shots. Nothing.

"You two should get back in your seats now. We're out of town now and those …things, don't seem to have gotten this far. Yet."

"But what the hell are they? And where did they come from," The woman in the front seat asked as Andrew and I got off the floor and back onto the seat.

"Why're you asking me? I have no idea what's even going on right now. It could be hell on earth for all I know. I'm just glad I spotted those two on my way to the truck."

"Why? How could two kids help us." The woman's voice was shaky with fear to the point where she was stuttering sometimes.

"Not them," Anthony explained as he focused on the road, "Their father. He's a pilot and he's got access to a plane. I don't know what the hell is going on, but I think we should get out of this country before it gets worse, and he can help us do that."

Mom. Dad. Please, just be safe, I thought to myself.

* * *

Anthony parked the truck right outside our house after about thirty minutes on the road. We hadn't stopped to warn people or to inform the police further in the country of what was happening. Whether they wouldn't have believed us or we were too afraid to stop in case they caught up with us, I wasn't too sure. But I knew if I was the one driving, with other people I needed to protect while not wanting to die … I wouldn't have stopped either.

When we got out the truck, the bright sunlight on my skin felt unnatural. I looked up and was surprised to see there wasn't a cloud in the sky. What had started as a gloomy morning had turned into a beautiful day which was the complete opposite of what had happened in town. Simple pleasures like enjoying the morning sun could not exist anymore. Not in this world of blood and monsters.

"Your parents haven't already left for work," The woman who had identified herself as Kelly asked as we walked up to the house.

"They're taking a day home," I answered. "Shouldn't we warn people about what's happening. Those things are going to overrun the entire country."

"Walter, right now we need to focus on making sure we can survive this. After that, we can focus on helping others," Anthony said as I unlocked the front door and we all went in.

"Mommy. Daddy," Andrew screamed, once we were inside and ran off to their room, but they were already on their way down the stairs.

"Walter, what's going on? Why aren't you and Andrew at school? And why're these people here and … what happened to all of you? Was there an accident," Dad demanded, visibly upset which turned into confusion when Andrew ran into his arms when he reached the bottom of the stairs.

"Mr. Hammond, I'm sorry to just show up at your house like this, but we really don't have time to waste. We really need your help. We need you to get us out of here, as in off the island," Anthony explained urgently.

"What!?" Both my parents screamed in unison.

"Can I have some water? Please?" Kelly begged. My mother looked taken back at this stranger who appeared and now started to make request but based on how battered and bruised we looked, especially Kelly whose clothes were muddied and dirty and jeans were ripped all over, she seemed to sympathized with her. She told her to have a seat and Kelly dropped into an arm chair while Mom hurried off to get some water for her.

"Walter," Dad exclaimed. His voice was powerful, demanding. "I want to know what is going on! What're you running from? Tell me what's happened. You all look like you've been attacked or was in some kind of accident. Andrew is scared to death and now Anthony is here telling me he wants me to fly us out of the country. I want answers. NOW."

"Are the phones working," I questioned, completely ignoring everything he said.

"What?"

"Dad, please. I'm going to explain everything, but you need to focus on what I'm saying. Are the phones working?"

"Why're you asking about the phones," Anthony asked suspiciously.

"That's how this started," Kelly answered, sounded weak.

Dad had Andrew cradled in his arms like a little kid and looked so upset at me I was shocked he wasn't screaming. Mom returned with a bottle of cold water and handed it to Kelly, who hastily uncovered it an drank close to half the bottle in one go. Dad put Andrew down and pulled his phone from out of his pocket, dialed a number and hit send. He then checked his phone screen.

"Well, there's no service," He told me unconcerned, while looking at me as though he was trying to tell me with his eyes that I should know I was in a lot of trouble.

My heart started beating furiously and I started hyperventilating. Anthony and Kelly looked frighteningly at each other. Tears even started rolling down Kelly's face and she made no effort to try to hold back the sobs. My parents looked at each other concernedly.

"That's how this all started. They're coming. They're coming and they're going to kill us. Oh my, God. Oh my, God, we're going to die," Kelly said frantically.

Before anyone could say anything else, the television, which I didn't even notice was on at the time, but the volume turned down, started flickering on and off until there was an explosion from outside so powerful that it shattered the windows in the house.

Everyone screamed as glass showered down on us. Just as before, somehow, we had ended up on the floor without me even remembering being knocked to the ground.

"What the hell was that? Is everyone okay," Dad asked as he got to his feet, picking Andrew up as well.

"I think it was probably a gas explosion," My mother said worriedly, as she got up and tried to calm my brother down as he had started hyperventilating.

"We've got to get out of here, now," Andrew shouted frantically to my dad, who seemed confused as to what was happening and what to do. Before any of us could do or say anything else, a loud, deep roar rang through the air, loud enough that we all hand to cover our ears.

It was the only warning we got. After that, I really can't remember what followed. I don't remember hearing any sound or being surprised by it or even noticing how the others reacted to it. But one moment, we were all there in our living room just trying to find our bearings, the next, there was a huge dinosaur-like creature, with deep gray skin like old clay, with half its body literally through the side of our house as though the wall had been made with cardboard.

My parents had an old-fashioned piece of furniture called a Room-Divider against the very wall the creature had crashed through. The Room-Divider had been flung across the room and crashed into the armchair where Kelly was sitting. She wasn't visible under the wreckage, but the brown cushioned armchair now had a deep red liquid spreading fast all over it. She was dead.

I felt disconnected from my own body. Like I was viewing these events through a screen. Was this even real? It had to be. I hoped it wasn't, but by this time I knew better. Someone had grabbed my hand so tight it was hurting and started pulling me along with them. That action brought my mind back into focused. It than occurred to me that my mind found it way too easy to drift away in serious situations. I would have to work on that. If I lived through this.

It was my mom who had gripped my arm and was pulling me towards the side door to get out of the house. Dad was just in front of us with Andrew in his arms against his chest. I looked around for Anthony. He was caught in the creature's mouth, struggling between its teeth, blood spilling from his body as its swung him from side to side as it finally forced itself fully into the house.

When we got outside, Mom and I moved to run to our car in the garage.

"No, this way," Dad shouted at us as he ran towards Anthony's truck. I was confused for a second but quickly understand that his truck boxed our car in, so it was just easier for us to take his truck.

Dad throw Andrew into the back and got into the driver's seat. I hopped into the back with my brother as Mom got into the passenger front seat. Andrew held my right hand and I squeezed it. With my family around me, I finally felt a glimmer of hope.

As my father was reversing the truck out of our driveway, our house began to collapse as the monster inside went trashing around, knocking walls and columns down. Andrew had crawled over my lap and had his face pressed against the windows watching in horror as our home was destroyed. But before I could react to it myself, the beast came barreling out of the crumbling house and rammed into my side of the truck. More specifically, directly into the front passenger door so hard that the glass shatter and the door was dented in far enough that it knocked my mother into my father.

The red truck was launched into the air where it turned over on its side three times before it slammed back on the ground upside down.

"Dad? Mom? Are you okay? My leg's hurt," I said as I tried to pull my hurt leg out from under the bottom of the front seat. When I finally managed to, after trying five times with pain shooting through my leg with every attempt, I feel down onto the roof of the truck which was down on the ground.

"Ow. Dammit," I shouted as fresh pain rang through my leg. I looked down at it and noticed my pants were ripped and my leg was bleeding. But before I could do anything, someone grabbed my hand.

"Walter, I don't feel good."

Andrew was lying next to me, his blue school clothes soaked in his blood. He was lying on his back and there was a small piece of metal impaled in his stomach.

"NO! Oh my, God. How did the hell did this happen? Where did this even come from? Andrew, you're okay, you're okay. MOM. DAD, Andrew's hurt and I need some help. I don't know what to do," I screamed frantically, vaguely aware that the creature was pacing around the truck and hissing rapidly as though wondering if it was safe to crack open the red shell to get the meal inside. I vaguely became aware of other shrieking sounds from around the neighborhood … and the screams.

"Andrew, I'm going to check on Mom and Dad, okay? I'm not leaving you," I said in what I hope was a reassuring voice because from the state of him, I wasn't feeling to reassured.

"Thank you, big brother," He cried, sounded relieved.

It was a little difficult, but I was able to maneuver myself between the two front seats. My hand shot to my month when I saw my parents' mangled bodies. They were still hanging upside down, strapped to their chairs by their seatbelts. My father's face was smashed in by the staring wheel because for some reason the airbags didn't deploy. My mother on the other hand, was just hanging there, with no apparent damage to her body. Not a drop of blood, but her mouth and eyes where wide open as though she had died from nothing but pure horror.

I wanted to look away, but something just kept me from being able to take my gaze from their dead bodies. I wanted to scream, but it just wasn't coming up my throat. I wanted to cry, but for Andrew's sake, I knew I could not. I put my left hand (the area just below my thumb) into my mouth and bit down, hard, until blood started to drip into my mouth. The sharp feeling of pain from my new wound was enough to keep the sadness of seeing my parents in that state bay.

I closed my eyes and squeezed my way back to the backside of the truck to check on Andrew. He had died in the short space of time it took me to check on our parents and return. Suddenly the overturned trucked rocked violently as it skidded a few feet away further down the driveway. I was thrown about inside the truck and pain erupted from my hurt leg, but not a sound escaped my lips.

I didn't feel the need to scream anymore, or the need to move or even the urge to cry any longer. It was as though within seconds all those raw emotions were stripped from me. From the time I got onto the bus to town this morning, everything seemed to change so rapidly.

From the time this mess began this morning, what kept me going was protecting my brother and reaching my parents. Those goals brought me focus, they kept me strong. But now, my family was dead. My parents, my little brother, who deserved a lot better than this … a lot better than me, were gone.

The inevitability of me joining them was clear to me and that suddenly gave me the courage to face my end without the fear and pain I always thought would be coursing through my body at the time of my death.

There was no need to fight any longer. I'd already lost more than enough. Whatever was happening to this world, I wouldn't have to suffer through it. And honestly, that thought brought me a little comfort. And at least, in a way, I would finally be safe, and at peace. I thought to myself as blood trickled down into my mouth from a new wound on my head.

Please don't misunderstand me, I did not want to die. It's just I'd accepted it as an inevitability.

Out of nowhere, a single bolt of lightning struck the ground about ten feet away from me accompanied by a thunderclap so loud I was sure the entire island probably felt it; because for me it felt like my eardrums had exploded. The force of the event was so powerful, the force of it threw me into the passenger door of the truck. Luckily for me, the creature was thrown back in midair too, because at same the moment the lightning bolt came down, the creature had leapt at the truck, intent on smashing its way in. If I didn't know any better, I would've said the lightning wanted that to happen. But I do know better.

I clearly wasn't an expert on lightning, but this one was strange and very different from any bolt of lightning I'd ever seen before as, for one thing, it was particularly powerful. In the fraction of a second, I'd managed to see it, it looked one foot think and was actually blue-white. Another thing that was odd about this lightning about the lack of heat. As it struck so close to me, I would have expected to feel its immense heat, but I didn't feel it. Instead, what I felt, was hope.

I felt it flowing through my body, my nerves, my cells. I felt it deep in my bones. The pain from all I had been through hadn't been erased from my mind, but it no longer felt like I was drowning in that sorrow. Now, it felt like … I had a purpose, a reason to live that even if I wasn't sure what it was, it was powerful enough to keep me pushing on.

When the lightning had struck the ground, it had made a small explosion, so there was still some dust swirling around there, but it quickly began to dissipate.

Even the giant creature seemed to sense the same thing I did, because it had already found its way back onto its feet but was holding its position and was hissing and flinging its tail around angrily, but not at the truck. Its aggression was now aimed at the spot of the lightening impact. It seemed to sense the same thing I did. That bolt of lightning wasn't normal, and it had left something on the ground, hiding in the swirling dust.

Just as this thought passed through my mind, the thick brown dust finally cleared. I was seeing it, but I still refused to believe it. Kneeling there as if waiting to start a foot race, tall and muscular, dressed in strange clothing was a man. But the fact he appeared out of a bolt of lightning wasn't the strangest thing about him.

This man, still kneeling outside the truck, was covering in bright, white flames. At first it looked like the lightning had set him on fire, but then I noticed that the white flames weren't licking at his body, they were coming from his body.

"It can't be you," I whispered in awe, but even with the distance between us, the hissing of the creature before us and all the noise from the screams and roars and sounds of destruction around us, he still heard me. He turned his head over to me. I was crouched on the ground (roof of the truck) looking at the scene outside through the upside-down window. The man was wearing a black scarf that was wrapped around his face up to his nose, but he caught my eyes with a powerful gaze that seemed to lock my eyes onto his.

His eyes, I thought to myself, noticing his bright green eyes even from this distance. They're like mine.

"It has to be you! You are, aren't you? You're the Impossible Man."

He pulled his gaze away from me and finally stood up body still clad in raging white flames, looking at the huge creature which was now roaring furiously.

It lunged at the man. He leapt forwards, literally charging towards death.

* * *

New lab technician, Sheldon, sat lazily with his chair reclined and his legs up on the counter in the huge, circular, underground monitoring room. It had been a whole week since he had been given the "important" but boring assignment.

Sheldon turned the page of an entertainment magazine he found in the lounge and took the opportunity to glance at the extremely old but very efficient equipment. All the screens showed the same data, a couple visual ones showed the same images he had been watching for a while: views of the dimensional fractures and multiple entities emerging from them.

Everything was going according to the plan.

There was no change, just as he expected, so he just went back to the perusal of his magazine while sucking on his third lollipop in an hour.

When he had been recruited for The Company, he had figured he would've been part of the action, not pushed off to monitor data. The only positive he could say from his time there, apart from the money, was the fact that at least he and his family weren't trapped in the "situation" going on miles above his head.

Unexpectedly, all the alarms and signal lights in the room started blaring and flashing loudly and brightly all at once, which startled Sheldon and caused him to almost fall out of his chair. Once he righted himself, he checked a seismograph like machine that was recording energy emissions instead of ground motions, not even noticing his lollipop had dropped out of his mouth.

He whistled to himself. "I can't believe this," he said to himself.

There were three phones to Sheldon's left: a blue, white and the furthest was a red. He took up the red receiver and put it to his ear, not even having to dial a number as they weren't any on the phone, and held it there with his shoulder as he typed furiously on a computer, documenting all the information coming in.

"What," came a rough, deep voice from the other end of the phone.

"Sir, we have contact."

"Are you sure?" The other voice sounded a lot more interested now.

"Yes sir. There isn't any visual evidence, but the readings are conclusive. The incursion worked. We have contact. The Impossible Man is here."

END OF PART 1