The Shattered Earth

A series of devasting quakes rock the US and lead to people revealing themselves.

In the sweltering heat of July 2025, the ground beneath Memphis, Tennessee, groaned like a wounded beast. The first earthquake struck on July 4, a magnitude 7.8 that split the Mississippi River’s banks and toppled the Pyramid Arena into a heap of twisted steel. The New Madrid Fault, long dormant, had awakened with a vengeance. Over the next three weeks, aftershocks and secondary quakes—ranging from 6.2 to 7.5—pummeled the Midwest, collapsing bridges, cracking highways, and driving millions into makeshift shelters. Memphis became a ghost city, its survivors whispering of strange vibrations deep underground, not just tremors but something... alive.

By early August, the quakes spread westward, as if the earth itself were unraveling. Seismologists, scrambling to understand the unprecedented cascade, detected a pattern: the quakes were following ancient fault lines, converging toward the San Andreas and Cascadia Subduction Zone. On August 12, the West Coast erupted. Six massive quakes, each between 8.1 and 9.3, struck in a 48-hour period, releasing a cumulative energy equivalent to a theoretical magnitude 15.4—an event so cataclysmic it defied measurement. Los Angeles sank into rubble. San Francisco’s Golden Gate Bridge twisted into the bay. The Pacific Northwest drowned under tsunamis. Power grids failed, satellites lost contact, and the U.S. plunged into chaos.

Beneath the surface, in the labyrinthine caves of the Ozarks, the Rockies, and the Sierra Nevada, two groups had been watching, waiting. Humans—preppers, survivalists, and scientists who’d fled to underground bunkers—clung to dwindling supplies, their radios crackling with static. Alongside them, unknown to most, were the "bug-eyed people." They called themselves the Vren, a subterranean species with translucent skin, bulbous black eyes, and elongated limbs adapted to darkness. For millennia, they’d lived in hidden caverns, their existence a myth whispered in Native American lore. The quakes had shattered their tunnels, too, forcing them to the surface.

On August 15, as the aftershocks faded, the first humans emerged from a cave in Arkansas. Sarah Coleman, a geologist who’d predicted the New Madrid event, led her group of survivors into a world of ash and ruin. The sky was choked with dust, the sun a dim orange smear. They carried rifles, water purifiers, and fear. Then, from a nearby fissure, the Vren appeared. Their eyes glinted like polished obsidian, reflecting the faint light. Sarah’s group froze, weapons raised, but the Vren made no move to attack. Instead, their leader, a tall figure with a voice like rustling leaves, spoke in halting English: “We share this broken earth. We seek peace.”

The humans were wary. Decades of sci-fi had conditioned them to fear the "other," but the Vren were not invaders. They were refugees, just like them. The quakes had destroyed their underground cities, forcing them to abandon their isolation. The Vren explained they’d watched humanity from below, studying radio signals and discarded technology. They knew of the quakes’ cause: a tectonic shift triggered by deep-core geothermal experiments gone wrong, a secret project buried in government files.

Sarah, pragmatic and curious, proposed a truce. The Vren had knowledge of edible fungi and water filtration techniques honed over centuries underground. The humans had tools, weapons, and fragments of infrastructure. Together, they could survive. Reluctantly, the groups merged, sharing a camp in the ruins of a Colorado valley. The Vren’s bioluminescent skin lit their shelters at night, while humans taught them to harness solar power from salvaged panels.But peace was fragile. Not all humans trusted the Vren. A militia from a nearby bunker, led by a firebrand named Holt, saw the bug-eyed people as demons, a threat to humanity’s dominance. Holt’s group attacked, burning the camp and driving a wedge between the allies. Sarah and the Vren leader, Kzeth, fought back, using the Vren’s knowledge of the terrain to outmaneuver the militia. In the chaos, Sarah uncovered a data drive from a collapsed FEMA outpost, revealing the government’s role in the quakes—a reckless attempt to tap geothermal energy that destabilized the planet’s crust.

As winter loomed, the survivors faced a choice: rebuild together or let fear fracture them further. Sarah and Kzeth, now uneasy partners, rallied their people. They shared the data drive’s secrets with other survivor groups via salvaged radios, exposing the truth and calling for unity. Slowly, more humans and Vren emerged from caves across the shattered U.S., forming enclaves where knowledge was traded like currency. The bug-eyed people, once shadows, became teachers, healers, and builders.

By spring 2026, the first hybrid settlement rose in the Rockies, a blend of human ingenuity and Vren resilience. The earth still trembled, but the survivors—human and Vren—stood together, their eyes, big and small, fixed on a new horizon.