First Pages: Nothing by C.M. Simpson

Nothing is the Second short story to be found in An Anthology of Those Who Walk Among Us. It is also available as a stand-alone short story.

Nothing is a science fiction tale in which humans and shapeshifters find themselves locked in a battle for supremacy after a colony ship crashes.

Nothing is available as part of An Anthology of Those Who Walk Among Us, and also as a stand alone title at Smashwords, Kobo, Kindle, iTunes, and Nook.

First Page: Nothing

It was dawn on the prairie. The sun rose, red-gold, in a sea of pale blue sky, and was reflected in apricots and peaches on a sea of ice-green grass. The soft morning wind did nothing to ease the winter cold from the air.

Jerome watched the sun, and the prairie waking slowly beneath it. The colors of land softened the brown in his eyes, tainting it first with emerald, then with gold. He would have been horrified had he known. He had been a technician in the starship’s engine room, but now he was a soldier.

He stood on a rise in the rolling prairie, the grass lapping around his knees and steaming gently as it warmed with the sun. He stood above the town of Nothing, shivering as the breeze wound chilly fingers through his hair, and the dew on the grass soaked its way through the legs of his cotton fatigues. His breath came in small misty clouds as he gazed across the plains.

Beyond the town a river wound or rather, a riverbed, for its bottom was sand and rocks and islands of earth crowned with grass and trees that water rarely touched. Jerome looked it over carefully, just in case. The uneven ground and clumped vegetation provided a perfect place for concealment.

His gaze wandered to where another sentry stood, on another rise, overlooking the town. The man had shifted so that his back was to the town, reminding Jerome that the river wasn't the only place his enemy could hide. He turned to survey the ground behind the rise. Nothing broke the wavelike ripple of the grass.

The sun climbed higher in the sky, turning the grass from an ocean of softly rippling green ice to a never-ending land of waving gold. It reminded Jerome of the wheat fields that, on another world, had surrounded his home. Small, birdlike creatures whistled and flitted just above 

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 If you would like to read more, Nothing is available as part of AnAnthology of Those Who Walk Among Us, and also as a stand alone title at Smashwords, Kobo, Kindle, iTunes, and Nook.