Playing in the Street

By Dean Wesley Smith

Sometimes a lost gold mine offers up more than just gold. And sometimes a secret should remain a secret.

A generational science fiction story from USA Today bestselling writer Dean Wesley Smith.

A version of this story by Dean Wesley Smith first appeared in The Secret Prophecies of Nostradamus edited by Cynthia Sternau and Martin H. Greenberg.

Bestselling author Dean Wesley Smith has written more than ninety popular novels and well over 100 published short stories. His novels include the science fiction novel Laying the Music to Rest and the thriller The Hunted as D.W. Smith. With Kristine Kathryn Rusch, he is the coauthor of The Tenth Planet trilogy and The 10th Kingdom.

He writes under many pen names and has also ghosted for a number of top bestselling writers.

Dean has also written books and comics for all three major comic book companies, Marvel, DC, and Dark Horse, and has done scripts for Hollywood. One movie was actually made.

Over his career he has also been an editor and publisher, first at Pulphouse Publishing, then for VB Tech Journal, then for Pocket Books.

Currently, he is writing thrillers and mystery novels under another name.

• Language: English
• Publisher: WMG Publishing
• Release date: Jun 3, 2010
• ISBN: 9781452378169

Dean Wesley Smith

Considered one of the most prolific writers working in modern fiction, USA TODAY bestselling writer, Dean Wesley Smith published far over a hundred novels in forty years, and hundreds of short stories across many genres. He currently produces novels in four major series, including the time travel Thunder Mountain novels set in the old west, the galaxy-spanning Seeders Universe series, the urban fantasy Ghost of a Chance series, and the superhero series staring Poker Boy. During his career he also wrote a couple dozen Star Trek novels, the only two original Men in Black novels, Spider-Man and X-Men novels, plus novels set in gaming and television worlds.

Book preview

Playing in the Street

Dean Wesley Smith

Playing in the Street

Copyright © 2012 by Dean Wesley Smith

Published by WMG Publishing

Cover Design copyright © 2012 WMG Publishing

Cover art copyright Alexei Zatsepin /Dreamstime

Smashwords Edition

This book is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. All rights reserved.

This is a work of fiction. All characters and events portrayed in this book are fictional, and any resemblance to real people or incidents is purely coincidental.

This book, or parts thereof, may not be reproduced in any form without permission.

Playing in the Street

Chapter One

Moscow, Idaho. July, 2030

A fine layer of gray dust covered everything. Old cars, rusted, tires flat, lined the street like a huge metal fence. Every car coated with the dust. No animal footprints, not even that of a cat crawling on the hood and sleeping in the sun. Nothing since the gray dust fell.

Litter had spilled out of a garbage can in front of one house and was now glued in place by the dust. The trees were dead, black skeletons, making the street appear to be in the grip of winter all year long. A stop light at the street’s end, three dark round eyes in the sky, watched the complete lack of movement on the quiet suburban scene. It watched the mailboxes and the child’s bike. It watched the basketball hoop above the garage door of the split-level and the bare areas that had once been green yards.

Before. The evidence of before was all along the street. It lined the street. It was the street. There had been a time of life here before the dust had settled over it. The dust had fallen at night, then it had rained and the dust had become hard, like a child’s clay exposed to the air too long. It still looked mostly like a layer of gray dust, but it never altered. Not even the winter snows and spring melts could move or change it. And there was nothing anyone could do to clean it up. The dust was there to stay for centuries to come, of that there was no doubt.

The unblinking glass eyes of the old, rusted cars watched silently as the dust held its strangle hold on the neighborhood.

Now there was only silence.

Now there was only now.

And dust.

I am always careful to walk in my own footsteps. The boots of my protective suit leave large, patterned prints in the top thin layer of dust and I am careful on this street to match those prints step for step. Not doing so would feel as if I was tearing up a piece of my own history.

I always park my government van near the