Outside his motel room was carnage like nothing he could ever have imagined, likened only to the mad rampages he'd witness in the Rambo films, cars were upturned and fires raged all around, Pontheaven, the town a mere 5 miles away was blazing like a bonfire on fireworks night. The sky fall of ashes and the screams, blood curling screams of agony from all around him. He realised he'd stopped breathing and took in a deep breath, the smoke chocking him as he remained in the door way. His eyes drifted from left to right, taking in the burned bodies, some half hanging out of cars in the parking lot and roads in front, and as he turned to his room to run for his phone, he saw that the motel around him was all but gone, burned to a cinder as if a flash fire and ripped and gutted the building, Tyler's room was the least damaged, it generic cheap metal bed hissed and cracked as it cooled from the sudden heat, the dirty cream walls black with smoke damage and the phone melted to a crisp on the burned out bed side table. He looked outside again as the inferno around him raged.

A desperate cry from nearby grabbed his focus and he ran out of his room for the sound, a little boy, cuts and bruises all over his little body, cloths burned and bloody and he knelt there pulling at the lifeless burned body of what he could only imaging was the boy's mother, her features locked in pain of the likes Tyler couldn't imagine. The pleas of the boy, lost and confused, asking his mum to get up tore through his heart as tears threatened to slide down his cheek. Tyler knelt by the boy and gently rested his hand on the child's shoulder gripping gently as the child finally broke down, resting his head on his mothers, weeping his heart out. After a few minutes Tyler and the boy stood, Tyler gave his name to the boy, and the boy gave his back to Tyler, Paul, he had said, still crying over his mother and furiously wiping at the relentless stream of tears falling down his cheeks, and in that moment, Tyler promised to take care of the boy Paul, Promised his most heartfelt promise, one in which he would never break, no matter what were to happen.

The dust and smoke parted after a few minutes more just enough to show other people in the smoke stumbling about., men looking for their wife's and children, women their husbands and kids and children looking for their mums and dads, everyone lost and looking. Some were just walking around aimlessly, just helping where they could help the most, most however were to hurt to do more than crawl or stumble around, pain stricken faces and tear filled eyes and the desperate cries for help and the frantic search for loved ones. Tears and screams were the main thing and filled the air from everywhere around him, more damaging to him than the foul ash he breathed and the heat of the fire which burned all around him. And again a light flashed in the distance so bright in burned into his eyes and now when he blinked the numbers and location were gone for good from his mind, erased forever, a second later, another tremor shook the ground knocking people off their feet and crashing them to the floor, followed by a loud roar and the brick work of the motel behind finally gave into the damage it had suffered and collapsed in on itself, again shooting vast amounts of smoke and grit into the air to mix with the smoke and flames already present.

"What the hell was that!" one man shouted, panic plain in his features, his black business suit torn to shreds as he looked from the direction of the blast through the flame wall which surround them all and then to the collapsed building behind them..

Tyler wiped his eyes clear and cleared his ash covered brown hair out of the way while thinking of the most delicate way to put his knowledge to use. "A missile" he said finally when no one else spoke up to the business mans words, and it dawned on him what had really happened; what it meant. "It was a missile, a bomb, whatever you want to call it, but it was a big one" his nervous hands shook as he spoke out loud more to himself than to the others around.

The business man then broke into a nervous laugh, raking his hand through his bolding hair as he too realised what had happened while others around mimicked him or broke into more tears.

As Tyler looked around himself, the night had become alive with fire; it danced majestically over and around downed building and cars making little difference about what it consumed. And he could already tell from the distance, that the town a mere five miles away was completely gone, buildings still stood but he couldn't imagine people surviving that when even five miles away, the damage was so catastrophic. He softly took the little boy Pauls hand in his and walked out of the parking lot and down the road toward the town of Pontheaven. No doubt on his mind about the kind of horrors he would see there, but hopeful, that if anything, there would be the place there that would hold salvation or at the very least, the supplies they'd need to survive, and with a group of survivors that were willing to make the walk in hopes of finding help, they started to walk the five miles following behind Tyler, each searching for their own answers.