Emerald Sky by David Clarkson

medical test known to man and none showed anything
to be wrong with her. As far as she could tell, her immunity to the radiation
was permanent. Where everybody else had succumbed to madness, she was
completely unaffected. Internally, the poison could not harm her, but
externally she believed there was still a chance she would feel its influence.
That is why she had returned.
    As the land darkened, the sky lit up. The
Heavens were filled with the light from ten thousand stars. That was not what
she had come to see, however. As her eyes adjusted, she turned her gaze
downward, back to the desert surrounding her on all sides. Slowly, it too began
to light up. The animals began to glow. It was not a light that could be seen
by everybody. In her former life, she had travelled on an astral plane. When
outside of the body, matter takes on a different appearance entirely. It
becomes translucent and that is how she now saw the world – through the eyes of
an astral traveller, though she herself was firmly tethered inside of her own
body. The radiation was doing its job.
    Energy in its purest form could not be
more distinct from the matter it creates. The animals could only be
distinguished by their movements. The kangaroos moved in short, staccato leaps.
The snakes flowed like a meandering river. All were different, yet all were the
same – just pure, compressed energy. There was more life there than she thought
possible. With each passing second the brightness increased until it
overpowered her.
    She sensed that something was wrong. The
brightness was too intense. There was too much energy.
     
    ***
     
    Alex was not the only one unable to let go
of the past. Back in the present, Jimmy was also confronting the tragedy that
had befallen his home town. It was not the town itself that he was concerned
with, however, but the residents who once called it their home. One resident in
particular was never far from his thoughts.
    She looked peaceful. Her breathing was
calm and even. In fact, there were no physical signs that anything was wrong at
all. To all intents and purposes, it appeared that she was merely sleeping and
could wake up at any moment, completely oblivious to the drama surrounding her
slumber and that of her friends, family and neighbours. Jimmy squeezed her
hand, hoping she would feel something, but her body did not react.
    He looked around the room. The beds were
all evenly spaced in neat, clinical rows. He had seen nothing like it before
other than in scenes from the movies. It was like the makeshift hospitals that
so readily sprung up on the battlefields of Hollywood war films. Except that
here there was no war going on and there were no pretty nurses on hand to tell
him everything was going to be all right.
    His powers were useless here. When he
thought of the things he had done since leaving the town and all the people he
had helped, he knew that he would trade it all for a chance to help the woman
whose bedside he now attended at every opportunity. He would do anything just
to bring his mother back from the abyss into which she had fallen.
    Sometimes, he thought he could see
movement in the corner of his eye, and turn, hoping to see the spirit of one of
the town’s fallen. Not all of his secrets were shared with the American people.
They were not aware he knew all about the experiments that had gone on at the
observatory of Jackson Fox. He knew that the scientists and soldiers there had
been able to travel outside of their bodies. With his enhanced senses he
believed it possible that should he ever encounter such a traveller, he may be
able to see them when nobody else could. Sadly, he saw no such spirits here.
     
    ***
     
    She heard a car pull into the driveway.
Adam was not due home until much later and she did not expect guests. Since
arriving in town she had built for herself a social life that could be
described as functional at best. She attended the mandatory school gatherings
and made sure to be seen out and