Hell has come to earth.
The whine of a jet shakes the building as it swoops by, and I grab a wall for support.
My stomach clenches at the noise, like it knows something I don’t.
It does.
When the explosion hits, the sound consumes me. It shrieks across my skin and as my body’s thrown back, the last thought I have is that out of all the ways I thought I might die, this one’s the most preferable.
I FIGHT AGAINST consciousness. Everything already hurts. I don’t want to face it.
My body doesn’t give me a choice. I moan as I stir.
I’m on fire. I must be.
The fever’s fully set in, and I’m being cooked from the inside out.
I peel my eyes open and lick my chapped lips, tasting soot and plaster on them.
Where am I?
Trash and debris litter the ground I lay on. I remember the mad dash I’d made up here and the sounds of fighting.
All’s silent now.
The rays of early morning light stream in from the gaping hole, and my throat tightens. It’s the most beautiful thing I’ve seen since I can remember.
I crawl to the edge of what remains of the room, where the floor drops away. I lay directly beneath a beam of that early morning light. It touches my skin and all the depravity of this place can’t ruin this moment. I close my eyes as a tear trickles out.
I’m not going to die here. Not amongst my enemies.
I crawl back to the stairwell, grabbing my fallen gun from the debris. I must’ve dropped it during the explosion. Shakily, I push myself to my feet and tuck the weapon into the small of my back, flicking the safety on.
Everything hurts. God, does it hurt. I won’t allow myself to focus on the pain or the unsettling silence.
When I make it to the ground level, nothing stirs. Only the dead live here now.
I make my way towards what must be the front of the building, ignoring several bodies that are slumped against the wall or splayed out along the floor. The bombs missed this section, and the front door ahead of me is still intact.
Only a fool would head towards the carnage, but I’m beyond playing it safe.
I step into the light on shaky legs. I blink away some of the fever-induced haze to take in my surroundings.
The pink rays of dawn touch scattered bodies. Dozens of them. Maybe hundreds. The morning light doesn’t seem so peaceful anymore.
It’s just like my first memory, only worse. A sea of soldiers surround the building I just exited. All dead. I don’t even hear moans or their death throes.
My skin prickles, and I can’t say it’s from my fever this time.
Someone attacked them so thoroughly that none survived, and none of the living have come to collect them.
The king.
They’ve been picked off like fish in a barrel. It’s not just from the explosions either. Their bodies are riddled with bullets, and some look bloated, their vacant eyes bulging from their sockets.
Snow hits me, tangling in my hair, and I’m distracted from the graveyard of bodies. It’s snowing. Only, heated air blows on me like the devil’s breath.
I catch a flake in my cupped hands, cradling it like I’ve captured a butterfly. I open my hands wide enough to peek at my find. It’s gray and paper thin.
Not snow. Ash.
I glance above me. The sky looks bruised, as do the clouds. And it smells … it smells the way hell should smell. Of sulfur and spent kindling.
My gaze moves from my hands to my feet. Between bodies, piles of the ash swirl like fallen leaves. Up my eyes move. Up, up, until I see mounds of rubble and tilted phone poles. Crumbling streets, some with large sinkholes, stretch off towards the ruins of a city.
My carefully crafted memory never showed me this. It wouldn’t know how to string together so many awful sights.
None of the skyscrapers are completely intact. Some looked chewed upon, like a giant creature came, got a taste, and found it lacking. Others look like they’re decaying, slowly shedding their sleek chrome exteriors and tinted windows for steel cables and concrete skeletons. One skyscraper looks as though someone took a giant axe to it and felled it like a tree. Its upper half leans against another.
Then there are the gaping holes between some of them, like some of these behemoths have already collapsed.
Do people still live there? What sort of existence must they eek out?
I take a few more steps forward. The sight of this world—my world, the one I don’t remember—robs me of breath.
The drone of an engine has me tearing my eyes away from the ruins and towards the sky. In the distance I can make out several aircrafts.
I was wrong to think there was any safety in the silence. The jets are not nearly done with this place. I begin to move, though all I really want is to collapse.
I catch sight of a military vehicle partially buried beneath the rubble. I stumble over to it. As I get closer, I can hear the low purr of an idling engine. The machine gun responsible for the earlier noise is welded to the bed of this vehicle. The body of a soldier slumps over the weapon.
The driver side window is shattered, and when I open the door, another body tumbles out.
I’m numb to the sight of death. I step over the dead soldier without giving him a second glance and hoist myself into the car.
The key’s already in the ignition, so all I have to do is shift the car into reverse and press on the gas to get it going. I hear a sick thump as the body in the bed of the vehicle hits the metal wall that separates us. More sick thumps come as I drive over the bodies littering the ground. I white-knuckle the steering wheel as each one jostles my injuries and shakes my unsettled stomach.