[h1]Upper Peninsula[/h1] [h2]Escanaba[/h2] Marc felt something brush against his side, he felt something brushing along his face. It was numb at first, then it came rapidly like the cold. He lazily stirred awake to stare into a clear morning sky, without a cloud in the air and basking in a soft glow of the morning sun. His entire body felt sticky, and he attempted to move, the ground underneath slurped and sucked under his shifting weight. “You're going t' have'da stay put.” a low voice said alongside him. The entire front of his brow ached and hammered worse and sharper than any hungover. His stomach grumbled empty and sickly as he rolled his eyes to where he had heard the voice. His breath hung stiff and heavy behind his tongue as he looked over. Leaning over him a man in a soldier's helmet leaned over his still body. He had in his ears a stethoscope and a white papery mask clung strapped over his mouth. Marc felt cold all of a sudden, as he felt the sensation to feel crawl back. He felt the cold mud that had soaked into his skin and caked his skin. He tried to stir, but the man urged him to stay still. “Don't.” he said coldly, and rose the end of the stethoscope up over Marc and placed it under his shirt. The metal was colder than the winter snow and he flinched against it, but the army doctor simply pressed harder to compensate and pressed it against his chest. “Ya heart rate is normal.” the doctor said, “Do ya fell anythin'?” “W-what do you mean?” Marc asked, he was beginning to feel afraid. He tried to sit up but was pushed back into the mud by the soldier, “I feel fine.” “Are ya sure?” “Y-yes, I'm sure!” “What about your head?” he probed. “Wh-” Marc began, but he was called back to that sharp hangover. His forehead felt rough, aching and sore like an iron spike had been driven clear into it, “My head fucking hurts, what happened!?” he protested. “Then you can stand.” the doctor confirmed, rising to his feet. Lowering a hand he helped Marc up off the ground. He staggered and shivered as the cold morning air bit his saturated clothes. It rolled over onto his back like ice off the lake, his shirt and coat betraying him to the wolves of cold northern air. Wrapping his arms around him, he fought to stay warm, and wanted to immediately dive back into the mud. At least then it was protected from the wind. Looking up though, he forgot about the cold. Smoldering not but a few yard away a farmhouse lay smoldering, nothing but ash and twisted cinders as thin tendrils of smoke snaked their way into the cool spring sky. Out further beyond the trees the remnant columns of smoke from Escanaba proper sailed into the cold blue. A mounting feeling of dread wrapped dreadful arms around him and caught him in an embrace not so dissimilar than what he had felt when he got up. He collapsed to his feet, struck with awe and terror. “Blanket.” the soldier requested, tossing a heavy wool shroud over Marc. The man's boots crunched in the snow as he turned to walk away. Marc turned, shouting to him, “Wait! What happened?” The soldier stopped and looked out at the scene around him. Faint stains of blood flecked the snow, there was a fine coat of gray ash that peppered the melting spring snow, and the air smelled sweet with char and fire. “Someone attacked.” he said simply. Shrugging apathetically. Now that Marc had a good look at him, he realized he wasn't army. The faint blue-gray of his winter uniform said it all. He was navy. The knee-length coat he wore decorated in the regular insignia of the merchant marine, the anchor hauling gull. “B-but, what happened?” Marc panicked, shuffling to his feet. His hands held the coat tight around his shoulders as he raced to the doctor. His legs felt numb and he staggered and limped to him, “I see something happened. B-but... Who? What? “Whose dead, taken!?” he pleaded. Again, the sailor shrugged. He wore a mask of naked apathy, unflinching as he turned and walked off to the next survivor, “Can you at least tell me where to go?” he asked after them, hoping to get answers. But there were none. ------------- As Marc wandered through central Escanaba, the woolen blanket wrapped around his shoulders like a cloak the chaos and panic of the night before found ways to eek back into the mind. While he had awoken in numb pain and murky confusion, the dawning weight of what had occurred was coming back in. He was striken and slow as he shuffled through the middle of the street passed the late Victorian architecture of mid-town Escanaba. Windows had been shattered and gray and black smoke still rolled out from some of the windows from the attack last night. There was a sullen sadness in the air as people just sought to collect the pieces, count the wounded, and collect the dead. Marc tried to rationalize it, and to try and remember what had happened. He was at the bar last night, drinking and looking for someone. And he was seated with and talking with a stranger when everything suddenly went quiet. Then he – everyone – heard the explosions as something, or someone attacked. In a shaken way he wished he had gotten drunk enough now to not have to remember the details. That as he wandered down the main drag from the highway that it was all just some thing he would catch up on later, after waking up half on the floor and half in a bed. But no, it was too real as he passed by a metal-framed cart, draped over with a fraying tarp. A still life-less hand hung out the back that he beheld with lifeless, child-like wonder and horror. But he wasn't quite panicked, not as he shuffled along. From a side-street a man stepped out, his face pale and eyes wide with terror, a concern greater than any storm cloud to threaten over the horizon. “Rebecca!?” he called out into the still afterglow air, “REBECCA!?” he shouted, dragging his hands through thinning brown hair. “Rebecca?” Marc asked in a low asking voice. A part of him hung on the unknown plight of this man. As a parent, and a once married man. “Rebecca, my daughter. Have you seen her?” the man pleaded, wide-eyed with terror. He shook and quivered as he wrapped an arm around himself, like he was naked and defenseless. The way he looked on at Marc hopefully and chewed his nail was beyond the want and need for confirmation. He was a child again wrapped up in something striking and... Marc stopped, that last bolt of a thought shooting back to him. Hitting his head like a twenty pound sledge and he felt a sensation of terrified hopeless gnaw his feet and numb his mouth. “Shit.” he muttered to himself and began to race off, shuffling more at first before it turned into a run. “Wait! Do you know!?” the man called back after him, but stopped in his own chase of Marc after a few steps of his own and shuffled back into town. Ellie. Marc had almost forgot about Ellie. He would kick himself, but he was running. The blanket coat dragged along behind him until he simply let-go and fly off behind him. He raced off down the side-streets, through neighborhoods long abandoned with their old century old houses beginning to show for their weight in time and age. In the stillness of the air's breath his feet echoed from the faces and empty windows of these abandoned shacks as he scrambled for the lake. The streets that had been so familiar seemed no longer so much so as he ran to the ranch house he called home. The door to the road had been torn off, the glass shattered and broken. Someone had fired arrows and bolts into the mildew covered white aluminum siding and a dead dog lay out beside the stoop. Even the trees in the yard and alongside seemed unforgiving and defiled in the way they bowed over as Marc ran to the empty, darkened house. The panic was set deep in his heart, burrowed in like a gopher. He bound up the steps, simply jumping over several and into the door. Mud caked the carpet and the furniture was a mess. Marc felt his chest pound with terror as he cried, “Ellie!” he roared. No response came. Marc dashed down the main hall, tearing to the rooms at the far side, hoping to find his girl still hiding. But the doubt grew stronger as he lay eyes on the door-frames with the doors hewn clean off the hinges. Deep gouges hit the wooden frames almost strategically. And without obstruction Marc stood in the passage to his daughter's bedroom looking at the chaos and disorder that now reigned there. A bed upturned, dressed thrown against the floor, clothes and broken glass littered the floor along with the splinters and remains of the hollow door that had hung between her room and the hall. A defiling stench hung in the air, a mingling stench of sweat, blood, and terror. It was hard to tell who had hurt who, holes in the dry-wall, blood on the floor. Someone had tried to fight. But there was no body, no one had died. Marc fell on the floor weeping, someone had taken his daughter. ------------- By noon there was anger in the air. The town gathered at the town hall, or rather the old Secretary of State building. For the anger and fear in the community, there wasn't any location big enough to support all the people who had come forward, desperately seeking answers from somebody. Anybody who might know what had happened. But even then, the state office's lobby was too small all the same and people had packed in asses to elbows. Their voices joined into a sea of chatter in the closed space. Along the edge of the room, battered and injured city police and the few odd militia who had managed to respond leaned on the wall or sat slumped in rusting metal chairs. They traded looks of concern between themselves and the townsfolk they were sword to protect. Some look even more frightened of the people here than what it was they had to respond to, after all: in this moment, all it needed was a particularly angry individual to cause a riot and take their rage out on them. They weren't ready for that sort of thing, no one was. Through the dense crowd Marc managed to push himself up to the front, squeezing against the chest high counter that half a century ago clerks would have processed state driving and boat licenses. But the world no longer needed such things to the sort of scale that had existed before, the office had since become empty and almost half-forgotten. Only woken up for emergency situations such as this. Behind the desks the mayor and marshal of Escanaba nervously talked with the commander of the city's militia, a navy captain, and a familiar look ranger. They shot occasional looks to the murmuring crowd, afraid to approach them. Marc could see their looks of despair here, they probably had as little information of what had happened as they did. It was chaos, there was in the room a high expectant energy. The air became tepid and tense as the town's mayor, a large middle aged man climbed atop the counter. Addressing the large congregation woefully he began with truth, “I am as shocked as you all are.” he started, “There is no amount of words I can offer to describe what had happened in our fair town. We had for over a decade now thought we were at peace at last and could go about our lives without fear of assault, of attack. But clearly, it was not a verdant peace as we hoped. “I'm not going into the specifics about last night. By now we all know. We were attacked by an unknown assailant who left us as quickly as they had come.” his words were tense and measured. Every time he finished a sentence he looked down into the crowd with the sort of tense expression given when expecting a punch. So far, the mob looked up at him silent and taking in what he was saying. With heavy breaths he continued on, “After last night's raid, we have counted the unfortunate dead to be at forty-five individuals.” a murmur lit through the room, “Many had been caught in their homes, or in the streets, and down-town has been ransacked. “But what is truly shocking about all this is not the dead, but the missing. Our best head count of individuals declared missing is one-hundred thirty four individuals, mostly female.” another rippling wave of concerned tearful murmuring shifted through the room. “What about my daughter, Ellie McTarson?” Marc could feel himself shiver and shack. So many emotions were wrapping him in a stranglehold. Rage. Fear. Despair. So many feelings and conflict burning within him. The mayor looked down at him with pity in his eyes. He looked behind him to the small group of city officials who hung back in the old staff area. A young secretary thumbed through a registry, scanning the pages quickly. Looking up she gave a silent shake of her head. “One-hundred forty-five individuals!” the mayor declared, correcting the count with the addition of Marc's girl. Again there was a wave of sympathetic chatter through the room. Marc felt numb. He leaned against the desk as the mayor went on, before offering his soap-box of a desk to the captain who had sailed into town. He explained that he and his men came to investigate when they saw the smoke in the early morning light and that their assailants had already passed by the time he came. But he promised he would go to Lansing and personally put in a request for a regular garrison. The exact words he used and those promises he made feel deaf on Marc who wrapped himself up into his own world. Shivering with so many feelings, absolutely numb to the world and frozen within himself. His Ellie, and over a hundred others. He needed a drink. He needed one bad.