Errant Shot

by William Petersen



  Errant Shot

  By: William Petersen

  Copyright 2014 William Petersen

  Errant Shot

  Tim awoke without opening his eyes, the muffled sounds of the television slipping words into his semi-consciousness, “hundreds injured... no official count yet, but there are confirmed fatalities... air-burst...”

  The last two words caused his eyes to snap open and his brain to uncomfortably fall into reality. “Air-burst...” he said aloud. Tim sat up in bed, rubbed his eyes and lit a cigarette, then brought his attention back to the broadcast.

  “...less than a mile above the city at around three-thirty in the morning. Most Kansas City residents were sound asleep, and other than the huge fireball in the sky preceding the explosion, there was no warning at all,” the news anchor, a very attractive brunette in a red pantsuit, told him. “Most injuries were from flying glass and other airborne debris, but several smaller buildings, in and around the city, were damaged, and some actually collapsed under the assault. The size of the object is not yet known, and so far, no pieces have been found on the ground,” the anchorwoman elaborated.

  Tim's interest was piqued. He had planned to sleep in today and start four days of fishing and drinking at a local conservation area: a set of three medium-sized lakes nestled just outside of Old Mill, Missouri, about seventy-five miles outside of St. Louis. However, he was just as interested in fossils and rare rocks as he was fishing, and meteorites were about as rare as they came. He had found four confirmed meteorites since he semi-retired and took up rock hunting and fishing on a full-time basis.

  After making a cup of instant coffee and checking the news feeds online, Tim momentarily thought of the cash that a piece of the space rock would bring in, immediately knowing anything that may have hit the ground would be far out of his range. “I'm not driving three-hundred miles to look for maybes,” he told his cup of coffee, “As a matter of fact, I'm not driving at all,” he said, thinking of his wheeled cooler full of beer.

  Tim was forty-two, and if not for some lucky, accidental finds, he would probably be unemployed and homeless at the present. As it turned out, he was able to write non-fiction articles online a few days a week and do whatever he wanted in his off-time, thanks to getting paid top dollar for his fossil and meteorite finds.

  Tim began to gather the supplies he had meticulously packed the previous night and donned his backpack, which contained two collapsible fishing poles, dough bait, a snap-top container for tackle and all of his dry goods for the day. His cooler contained twenty-four beers, a deli sandwich and some bottled water; all that he would need for the day. He grabbed a beer and opened it up, took a long drink and called a cab to take him to the lakes.

  Tim unpacked his cooler and backpack, paid the driver, who wished him luck, then proceeded down the paved foot trail which wound around the lake to the first of his favorite fishing spots. He set up his poles and got both lines in the water, then began scouring the bank, looking for any unusual rocks that caught his eye. Fishing was only half of the reason he spent so much time at this particular conservation area, the other half was fossils.

  Tim was not exactly a model of responsibility and had first come to the lakes after exploding at his last job, a customer service call center, and walking out. He decided to go fishing to calm down and come up with a game plan to pay the bills. He became bored after nearly two hours without a single bite and started looking around his feet at the different types of rocks.

  He had found several unusual-looking specimens at the trio of lakes and, from his interest in dinosaurs and fossils as a child, recognized many of them right away as pristine finds. After locating several types of fossilized coral and perfectly-preserved brachiopods, trilobites, ammonites and other eternally preserved sea creatures in the rocks, he began to realize they had value. The four chunks of coral alone were worth around one-hundred dollars each, nearly a week's pay at his old job.

  Tim began rock-hunting full time and found an outlet online that allowed him to write short, general non-fiction articles for a modest pay, and between the two, he no longer needed a traditional job. He kicked a few rocks around and smiled. “And the value of fossils never, ever depreciate. They only become more valuable over time,” Professor Winston, a Washington University instructor who had helped him identify most of his finds, had told him.

  In turn for the professor's help, Tim donated pieces to the university from each of his outings, including one of the four meteorites he had found at these very same lakes. The lakes were man-made, and the rocks used to line them were quarried and brought in from all over the state. The fill material was brimming with long-extinct sea creatures and ancient plant life, and it had turned into a veritable gold mine for him.

  While dozens of people walked the trails and fished along the banks every day, no one looked close enough at the dull, inconspicuous rocks that held the treasures. Even those who came to hunt for interesting rocks passed them up in search of glittering crystals and oddly shaped or uniquely colored stones. Tim glanced behind himself at his fishing poles, then turned back to his exploration of the lake's edge. A pair of women in their mid-fifties, both donning pastel colored fleece track suits and matching head-bands, power-walked past his location without even noticing him behind the weeds separating the trail from the water.

  Tim was momentarily blinded by a bright flash of light, which thankfully faded as quickly as it had appeared, about fifty feet down the bank from his current position. He turned his head slightly, until the object caught the sun and the bright reflection flashed again, allowing him to pinpoint its location. He walked up to where the flash had originated and found a fairly large, semi-circle of rocks piled in progressively taller rings that radiated outward from what was obviously a crater in the center. Tim's heart began to race, his mind instantly replayed the news footage of the meteor's damage and the line of its trajectory superimposed over a map of the state.

  As he got closer, there was no longer any doubt. “Ho-ly crap,” he said under his breath, in three very distinct syllables. His eyes traced the barely discernible flattened path of stones and vegetation leading up to the small crater, then he turned his eyes upward. Looking at the trees, he scanned where he thought the object's trajectory would line up, and was rewarded with the sight of an inline series of nearly perfect, circular holes in the crowns and foliage of the trees lining the bank of the lake.

  A jingling in the distance behind him announced that he had a vigorous bite on one of his poles, but Tim was far too distracted to turn and look. As first one, then the other fishing pole was dragged into the water, he cautiously circled the interstellar visitor with awe, photographing it and the immediate area with his cell phone. He frantically ran back to where his gear resided and retrieved several small towels that he used to handle feisty catfish, then ran back to his find.

  After gathering the basketball sized object into the towels and awkwardly carrying it back to his fishing site, he called another cab. Upon arrival of the taxi, Tim deposited his bundle into the trunk of the vehicle, hurried himself into the back seat, threw a twenty at the driver and recited his address. Not once did he consider the fate of his cooler or remaining fishing gear left on the bank in his excitement.