Scorch Zone 7
Even though it made her feel nauseous, the endless blackened fields held her eyes captive. The charred landscape zoomed past the window, and even with the vents closed and window up, the thick smell of charcoal perfumed the car.
“You’re not going to spew again are you?”
She ground her teeth, “No dad, I’m not. I’m pretty sure my stomach came up with that last round.”
“I know you hate this road, but we didn’t have time to go around the SZ.”
“Why couldn’t we have just caught a plane?”
“Magnetic storm. We were looking at a week for it to pass or a drive only an hour shorter from the other direction. Try taking a nap or something.”
She shook her head and resumed trying not to look out the window. Going through Scorch Zone 7 every few weeks might have made the creepy dead fields seem normal to her father, but something about it just made her feel sick down to her bones. She felt like something watched their speeding car from the charred fields.
SZ – often pronounced as “sizz” (like sizzle), SZ stands for Scorch Zone. There were a total of 12 Scorch Zones created from the wave. This snippet takes place approx 10 years after the wave.
n SZ 1, 3, and 9 they were simply the cause of magic energy overload coming from tears that linked to areas of dense elemental magics in the other world. 1 and 9 fizzled out as soon as the tears between the two world in those areas were contained, but 3′s tear was too large to contain and the area has been quarantined. It’s perimeter has been needed to be slowly increased over the last 4 years and has become a major concern to the Canadian government. Although it is in an isolated area presently, they worry that it’s expansion could grow exponentially.
SZ 4 turned out to be due to a nesting dragon. The UN has had to bow to increasing pressure from various animal rights groups and has launched an investigation into the fate of the dragon. Presently however the Persian government has been reluctant to disclose what has become of the dragon and her eggs.
The most prominent cause of the remaining SZs has only been discovered 2 years ago. SZ 2, 5-8, and 10-12 are the result of elemental creatures being pulled through by the wave. 2, 8, and 11 were the result of what experts from the other world have described as fire demons (or at least that was the closest translation that could be worked out). 5 and 6 due to some sort of electrical based creature (one of which is suspected to be causing the electrical storms south of Japan). 10 is suspected to be due to something drawn up from the other worlds core. Accompanying the fires in SZ 10 has been a pattern of burrowing, especially near Sydney and has caused most of the city to be abandon. The creature seems to be trying to find a magma channel, but has so far been unsuccessful.
SZ 7 and 8 remain a mystery at the present. While both areas follow the pattern of the other elementally effected zones, they seem to lack the erraticness. They also mirror each other, despite being thousands of miles apart. SZ 8 has left a swirling, intricate scar across the savanna that can be seen from space, and an identical pattern has nearly demolished the US’s bread basket. Neither showed signs of actual flame, but seemed to smolder until the area looked like a wildfire had gone through it. All crops in the two strange SZs that have not be charred, became poisonous if within a range of a few yards of the blacken land.
