The Sleeping Giant of Kansas

Previously

…Inside the shelter, the air was thick and hot, but breathable. They were safe, for now, but the world they knew was gone. The ashfall, which had seemed like the ultimate catastrophe, was merely the first act. The caldera’s collapse, the unleashing of the pyroclastic flows, marked a new chapter, one of utter devastation and the terrifying, uncertain dawn of a world irrevocably changed. The silence that followed the initial cataclysm was not a relief, but a chilling testament to the power of the destruction, a silence filled only by the frantic beating of their own hearts and the knowledge that they were now, perhaps, the last witnesses to a lost world.