Seattle, Washington
Three years after the Night of Madness

It was always the same. The pain. The falling. The crash. More pain. The fire. More pain. The memory of the pain and the fiery glow in his memories drove Eric into sitting up straight in bed as he woke. It was a cool spring night, but he was cold sweating and his heart was pounding as he gasped for breath. It took him a few minutes to let his racing heart slow. He twisted to a sitting position and checked the time on his clock. 8:15 PM. Right on time. His sheets were damp and they smelled like fear. Time to get ready for work. He turned off the alarm before it had a chance to start chirping and headed to the shower.

Three years ago, he was employed in construction, had a girl friend, a seven-year investment in the U. S. Army followed by the National Guard and he was taking night classes in civil engineering. Now, he had none of those. He had been at the Yakima Training Center, AKA Yakistan. Rugged, dry, barren land, it is used for manuever training. That night, he was driving a Humvee that was towing a rolling 500-gallon fuel tank, collapsible. Basically, a big rubber tire filled with JP-4 fuel for helicopters. His engineering unit was setting up a forward support base. As they approached his turn, he suddenly was hit with a fiercely blinding pain in his head. Bright light and pure pain. Later, when he tried to describe it, he said it was like a huge spotlight, right in his face while he was simultaneously shot in the head. Then, as suddenly as it happened, it was gone, but he was falling. He tried to slam on the brakes, but he was already well off the road, and off the hill, falling into the gully. He saw the ground as his vehicle bounced from a basalt outcrop and then slammed into dirt at the bottom of the dry gully. He slammed into his safety harness and then the Humvee flipped over onto the side and rolled. As it came to a stop, he groaned. He pretty much hurt all over. Then he heard a ‘whumph’ noise and the flames started. The pain. The falling. The crash. More pain. The fire. More pain.

He pulled into the construction site and tapped his horn at the gate. Don Cardenas opened it up, so he could pull in and park. Don was in a hurry tonight, so he had the logbook in his hand. Don signed out, Eric signed in. Business as usual. Don drove off and Eric locked the gate. He headed into the office trailer and set up his thermos. Taking the flashlight, he started his rounds. Security was about the only job that he could get currently. Anyone affected by the Night of Madness and declared as a Paladin was automatically removed from the military. That was the result of a UN Mandate forced on the US, Canada, Mexico and the various small nations affected. That took nearly a year to implement and various places, such as Cuba, were still not in full compliance.

Too bad he wasn’t a Paladin. That would have been cool, but he had never shown any abilities other than a good healing rate. Not like Wolverine, or some other comic book superhero, Not even TV show healing, where you got shot in the shoulder and were fine for the next episode. However, he healed and healed fully at about three times the rate that the docs were expecting. Close, but not good enough for the stipend and job. His girlfriend, Kelly Johnson had visited him in the hospital. He had been stablized at Yakima Memorial, and then transfered to the Burn Unit at Harborview in Seattle. He had overheard “Harborview” when he was still in Yakima and knew he was in trouble. Harborview Medical Center is THE premier burn unit for the Pacific Northwest. He had been burned over 50% of his body, basically his entire right side, but, he had pulled through and amazingly, was released in just a few months. By the time he did, Kelly was out of his life. She could handle his burns. She could not handle what happened to them as they healed. Instead of scarring, his skin grew back, smooth as ever, but it looked, ... colorful. The first skin to reappear was red; a deep, brick red. As later skin appeared, from worse, deeper burns, it transitioned through shades of red until it was orange, and then yellows, green, blue, indigo and violet. All the colors of the rainbow, except with more shades. Kelly freaked and called him a freak. And then she was gone. He wasn’t a Paladin, but he was too non-uniform to stay in the military. Medical declared him as the equivalent to having visible tatoos. He finished recovering and went to work. Well, he tried. That’s where he found out that he now had a strong phobia about heights. The falling. Even ladders were nearly impossible for him. So much for his construction work. And his civil engineering courses dried up through a combination of acrophobia, the predjudice of other students and his growing depression. Plus it turned out that the VA did not want to treat his mental issues. After all, it was just a vehicle crash.

Eric had been hoping to recover enough from his burns to stay in the military, but the acrophobia was the last nail in the coffin. Still, that earned him another 15% disability on top of the 35% he would have otherwise had to settle for. He couldn’t live on it if he had to. Even if he moved to the other side of the state where his cost of living would drop by about 30% or more. Two tours in Iraq, one Purple Heart and he was out. He had an honorable discharge from the National Guard, but there was this note that he could not get removed. The MPs had wanted to know what happened. They hammered and hammered, but no one would ever admit that NoM, the Night of Madness event, was responsible. So, it showed him as culpable. Reckless driving. Yeah, right.

He finished his first patrol and returned to the office trailer to make his log entries. After a potty break and a bit of hot tea fom his thermos, he started out on another round of perimeter checks. His first round had been concentrating on the interior, checking the equipment and job boxes full of tools. Now he was looking for damaged fences, or vehicles parked near them that could be used to climb over into the job site. Seattle’s building boom was still going on, even with the disruption of the Night of Madness. This site was a complete city block and they had already had problems with people going after copper wiring and pipes, as well as tools. Before his firm had been hired, they had lost three full Knaack Boxes and two big spools of cable.