The immortal rolled on.
Black cherry and American Elm rose up on either side of the road to shroud the hummer in shadow while the beams of the sinking sun pierced through here and there to illuminate the time worn lines upon his face.
His path took him through the backroads. Across little bridges that crossed tiny streams. Through neighborhoods that never appeared on any TV show, living as they did in the shadow of NYC's legend.
Forgotten places that reminded Amaranth of forgotten faces.
He remembered them now. Those men and women who had lived and died in the shade of his legend. Those who had believed in him. Believed in his cause.For over a quarter of a million years he had walked the earth and legions had walked along side him. Lived for him. Died for him.
Who now remembered them?
Only Amaranth.
He remembered every one. Today the memory of Albert lay heavy upon his mind. An old friend who had died in Ivana's conquest of Venezuela.
An old man, mourned by none. Forgotten. Amaranth wondered if any had even said Albert's name in the years since Amaranth's had been imprisoned by Avalon.
Another mutant who had given all. Not only his life but even the memory of him had passed away. As if he had never existed.
How many more, Amaranth wondered?
NYC, like most of the east coast, was a city built on top of a city built on top of another city. First a Dutch fur trading post that grew with the nation and it's exploding population each technological leap saw the city build atop it's former self.
When the population expanded new housing was tacked on to whatever space remained. Then technology leaped forward and new types of construction were laid beside the old. Coal depots dug beneath the sidewalks and then telegraph lines and then eventually power lines.
It was power that changed everything. Electricity.
First the lines need only supply a small amount of power for radios and lights. All too rapidly technological advancement would hurl NYC into the future and power lines must supply larger, more powerful devices. Then the information age exploded into the world, born in a digital big bang and suddenly the NYC power system was required to supply not merely radios, lights and TVs but power for an incalculable number of electronic devices 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year.
Technology was a ravenous beast and it fed on one food and one food alone. Electricity.
To sate it's inexorable appetite power systems had been layered on top of power systems. One width of power lines here, another there. One type of transformer here, another there. Each technological advancement in power generation and transmission saw instant construction as NYC struggled to keep pace with the never ending demand for more, more more.
The same was true of traffic. Each advancement, from horse and buggy to rail to motor vehicle to airplane and helicopter saw more and more systems built and stacked atop one another. Each explosion in productivity brought more workers which required yet another block of housing which required power and food and water and on and on and on.
NYC was less a city than it was several cities from different eras jammed together, stacked atop one another and always teetering on the brink of complete chaos as far too much of everything was crammed into one place.
Vast sums of money, thousands of working hours and a truly leviathan bureaucracy was the glue that held the city together. That held it back from the brink.
But it wasn't just NYC.
It was the whole east coast.
Spared the destruction the second world war had unleashed upon European cities the east coast was the result of three hundred years of unrestricted growth. There had been no plan. Capitalism ran completely unchecked; everyone built what they could afford wherever they could afford to build it.
The result was a mechanical giant made from a thousand different pieces of technology all glued together and lumbering along, fueled by the vast wealth of the American economy and the momentum of three hundred years.
It wasn't robust. It wasn't durable.
It was more vulnerable than anyone knew.
Amaranth pulled in front of a security gate. Rolled down his window.
"Sir, this area is off limits to the public."
Fifteen minutes later Amaranth drove away. The echo of the explosion still rang in his ears and he was pulling shrapnel from the hem of his white cloak. Thousands upon thousands of homes and businesses in NYC and the surrounding area went dark, further straining the complex east coast power system.
That was two. Seven remained. And then electric darkness.
About half an hour later he stopped beside a train track in New Jersey. It wasn't an intersection of rail and road. Trains were limited to forty nine miles per hour in populated areas. In the countryside the limit was seventy nine.
He could feel the rumble of the oncoming train in the ground as he climbed out of his hummer and drew the great adamantine blade from his back. The ancient sword cleaved through the train tracks as though they were butter. Then muscles strained as he seized the tracks and slowly, but surely, bent them as though there were a sudden curve.
There were 1,923,000 cars registered in NYC. 50,000 or so cabs. Tens of thousands of buses, construction vehicles, motorcycles, ambulances and even farm vehicles.
They all required fuel.
That fuel streamed in on the backs of semis, through buried pipelines, seaborne tankers and most of all, in trains.
The DOT-111 tank car was the most common type of rail fuel transport in America. It carried 34,500 gallons.
Amaranth climbed back into his hummer and drove away. Rapidly.
The oncoming train pulled forty four cars. All DOT-111 cars. All filled with gasoline destined to power NYC's millions of vehicles, generators and amusements for yet another day.
In the gloom of twilight the damage Amaranth had done to the tracks wasn't visible in time. The train derailed at seventy two miles per hour.
Two thousand and fifty nine tons of steel and fuel flew from the tracks and hit the New Jersey soil like the hammer of the gods.
DOT-111 cars were renown for their safety failures. They failed again; one cracked and then the next and the next, punctured by twisted steel driven by thousands of tons of force as it ripped a canyon through the dirt, car tearing from from car with the scream of steel twisting like playdough as cars flipped end over end; a vast marvel of engineering slapped sprawling across the countryside like a child's toy.
There was a spark.
1,518,000 gallons of gasoline caught fire.
First an explosion that rocked the earth. Earthquake alarms a hundred miles distant screamed a warning.
But there was too much gasoline. It didn't all explode at once. It couldn't. Cars were hurled skyward hundreds of yards, spewing burning fuel. Others went rolling across the countryside igniting everything in their path.
Most were rent into molten shrapnel that flew for thousands of yards and set fires wherever they landed while thousands of gallons of gasoline spilled across the countryside.
A flood of burning fuel washed through the empty land. Washed into the Pine Barrens of New Jersey.
The Pine Barrens were mostly pine. Mostly dry. Mostly Pygmy Pines which were uniquely flammable.
Nearly a million gallons of fuel washed into the Barrens and they caught fire like straw.
The Barrens covered twenty two percent of New Jersey and five federal and eight state highways ran through them. Highways now clogged by the smoke of a vast inferno devouring dry pine and driven by hundreds of gallons of burning gasoline. Other highways faced near destruction as fuel washed over the asphalt and melted it.
Dusk neared. Amaranth drove on. The interior of the black hummer was illuminated by the flickering orange of the hellscape to his east.
Americans thought they were invulnerable. That Bad Things™ only happened in urban warzones like Gothic City or far away countries with unpronounceable names. That their wealth was like an invisible forcefield that warded off evil.
They were wrong.
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