My blonde hair sticks to my sweaty forehead as I ignore the calls behind me.
Not my name anymore. The name of another doctor.
My fingers clench around the metal tent frame. For a moment, I feel its cold solidity anchoring me. Then I let go, and my boots land in a pool of blood that splashes up my trousers.
Bread and watery soup from this morning splash onto the churned mud. My body convulses.
When I wipe my mouth, I see the kid.
He’s closer now. Sitting against the grass in an unnatural slump, eyes open to nothing. Other bodies are scattered beside him. Men. Women. All tangled together, as though death couldn’t be bothered to keep them apart.
But they aren’t too many compared to the other piles of death. My stomach settles for a moment, only to heave again. I retch until nothing remains but sour spit and emptiness. My shoes are slick with filth, caked in blood and bile. I blink too often, trying to clear my vision. My head tilts back as I rip off my glasses and tear away the mask.
I thought I could endure this.
I volunteered. I convinced myself I’d be useful. That I’d of any help.
It’s been, what, two weeks? Nearly three since the day everything fell apart, the day we all decided to call the start of the apocalypse. A name so blunt it feels absurd, but no one bothers to argue.
I rub my eyes, pressing my fingertips into my lids until sparks dance behind them. They burn, dry as paper, while the low sun ignites every strand of my sand-blond hair. Dirty. Greasy. I haven’t washed in days.
I drag my sleeve over my glasses, wiping the grime away in slow, mechanical strokes. Then I tilt my chin and squint at the sky, teeth bared in something like a snarl—but it’s no smile. The sun glares down, blue instead of yellow, bright and pitiless.
It looks cold. It burns hotter than anything I remember.
Artificial. Like everything else overhead.
Silhouettes of birds drift across the bright vault. At first glance they look serene, even beautiful, as if the world had never ended. But even those shapes are wrong. Their wingspans are monstrous, bigger than any bird should be. Airplanes, more than animals.
The world has changed.
My breath catches, hitching in my chest. My skin crawls with phantom itches. I scan the sky and spot the rifts: massive black holes torn in the firmament. From here they look small—just cracks. But I know those voids are kilometers wide.
I still can’t truly accept it. None of us can. It’s too big, too wrong. But in the end, I don’t have a choice.
My ears ring, the tinnitus slowly fading, leaving only the distant roar of chaos. I let out a slow, shuddering breath.
Then the alarm sounds.
Not the shouted warning of a medic or a soldier. Not the panic of another breach in the line.
It blares from megaphones bolted to poles, rattling tents, vibrating through my ribs like the end of the world itself. And that’s exactly what it is.
I’ve heard this sound only once before. A test, years ago, back in school. We’d laughed about it then. Made jokes about World War III. Pretended it was nothing.
Back then was the past. Now is the present.
And the present is an apocalypse.
Out there is death. Not a clean, hot flash from a nuclear bomb. No tidy shadow burned into a wall. No wind to scatter our atoms like ashes.
Those orange giants that rip us apart like insects. Nothing in our arsenal can stop them. Not rifles, not tanks, not even artillery. Only nuclear bombs—if we’re willing to burn ourselves to stop them.
I see the fear on every face around me. Mine included.
Heidelberg never even sounded the alarm the first day those things fell on us. No warning. They just came. Either striding from the forest like nightmares, or dropping straight from those holes in the sky.
I’ve heard about the falling stones—massive plates of rock that crashed down out of nowhere. Crushed houses. Destroyed streets. Even churned the Baltic Sea into a frothing mess. Floods, big and small, sweeping away entire neighborhoods. Internationally, it must be worse.
Phones don’t work. Radios are silent. Television is static. All we know is rumor, carried by the people who managed to flee.