The Ghosts Left Behind - Part 1
Colonel Isaac Anderson looked out over the landscape with unease. The sun was setting. Darkness here came quick and once it did it was absolute. Hazy pollution from neighboring China often obscured the stars and moon at night, helping to hide the remains of civilization. Out beyond the fences of the UNMK's headquarters compound were rusting cars, derelict buildings, and overgrown streets. Incredibly, in only the four years since the bombs dropped and man fled, flora was already reclaiming what humans had taken from it.
It wasn't this darkness though that made the colonel uneasy, it was the stillness. Never in his life had he heard such silence. There were no commercial planes overhead for fears of flying through radioactive clouds, there were no rumbling power plants on; there weren't even the sounds of animals, many dead from exposure.
As the sun fell behind the hilly horizon, Isaac knew the night would be long and the silence loud. He leaned himself against the window frame and crossed his arms.
"What have we done to this place," he sighed.
"Sir!"
Isaac turned around, slightly startled. "Yes."
His team's second in command, Captain Aasav Harania, stood behind him holding a coffee. Aasav gestured for Isaac to take the drink.
"It's going to be a long night, yeah," Aasav grinned. "We'll all need some of this."
Isaac gratefully took the coffee and said, "Yeah, it will. If what they say is true, this situation could go down hill pretty fast."
"Why now, sir?" asked Aasav rhetorically. "What has made the mountain come to life again? They say the seismic activity they are recording doesn't appear to be natural."
"I don't know, Captain." Isaac took a long sip. "But that’s what we're here to find out. It can't be humans though. No one has been on this peninsula except for UNMK forces since December 2020 when the evacuation was completed."
Aasav nodded his head, stepping up next to Isaac, looking out the window. "I remember reading a testimonial from one of the Northerners who used to live around the mountain. They had defected a few months before the outbreak of the war. She said the mountain had become a place of death. Wells dried up. Trees died. Smoking cracks appeared. And then the ghost disease started, at first in the villages closest to the mountain, then progressively further and further away."
"Ghost disease, Captain?" Isaac chuckled. "A little far-fetched, don't you think?"
"Of course not, sir. It was radiation poising, from the test done inside the mountain. The people were being poisoned by something they didn't even understand."
Isaac looked at Aasav with a serious expression, the fading light sweeping across his face. "Not after this mission. We'll have cleaned it up. When people are allowed back one day, they won't have to fear the ghost disease."
Aasav nodded with agreement but remorsefully sighed. "Right. They'll just have to fear the ghost."