The dark was supposed to keep them safe, but the concrete chill seeped straight through Raina’s jeans.
For twelve hours, she sat on the hard floor of the underground shelter, knees pulled tight to her chest.
Grandpa’s calloused hand wrapped around hers, but her teeth still chattered.
Every time the earth rumbled, dust rained from the ceiling into her hair.
Adults cried, prayed, and whispered.
Raina kept her eyes squeezed shut, picturing the flower shop.
Picturing Kai standing at the door with his baton, and Lucen in the basement.
Then, the steel doors groaned.
The screech of the locks made the crowd flinch.
The heavy doors pulled apart.
A cold wind drifted down the ramp.
Before anyone even took a step, the smell came in.
It didn’t smell like the city anymore.
It smelled like crushed rocks, burning metal, and something sweet but rotten.
It smelled like raw blood.
Grandpa squeezed her hand.
“Stay close,” he whispered, his voice rough and tired.
Raina nodded, staying right by his leg as the massive crowd slowly walked up the dark ramp toward the morning light.
As they reached the top and stepped out beneath the open sky, the shuffling footsteps ceased.
Everyone froze.
Raina blinked against the bright sun.
This wasn’t Sector 135.
The apartment buildings, the neon signs, the crowded streets were gone.
The sky was empty.
Gray dust, broken rocks, and twisted pipes stretched to the horizon.
Black blood ran down the cracked asphalt, mixing with the morning rain and washing into broken drains.
Raina gagged.
Giant black bugs lay in piles, their shells cracked and leaking.
Beyond the ruins, the mutated forest stood untouched.
Glowing blue roots were already creeping over the shattered perimeter wall, reaching toward the ash.
The alien canopy swayed in the wind, stepping over the dead city, ready to swallow what was left.
A lady dropped to her knees in the mud, staring at an empty pile of rocks, screaming a name.
A man wandered in circles, hands clutching his hair.
A low, collective sob rose from the crowd.
Raina let go of Grandpa’s hand.
“Raina!” Grandpa called out.
His voice cracked.
She didn’t look back.
She broke into a run.
Her sneakers splashed through puddles of black blood.
She tripped over a chunk of broken asphalt, scraping her palms and knees, but pushed right back up.
Her feet hit the pavement.
One, two, one, two.
Her lungs burned.
Men in white and red uniforms rushed past with scanners.
“Over here!” someone shouted.
“Bring a medic!” “Look under the wall!” Heavy machines ground in the distance, lifting concrete slabs.
Medics pulled white sheets over shapes on the ground.
Raina kept her eyes fixed straight ahead.
Approaching Willow Street, she slowed.
Her breathing came in harsh gasps.
The buildings here hadn’t just fallen.
Massive, round holes punched through thick steel and concrete.
No burn marks.
No fire.
Just empty, smooth circular voids where walls used to be.
The street itself dipped into a smooth bowl, the earth scooped out.
She turned the corner onto Willow Street.
Her boots stopped.
The flower shop was gone.
The wooden sign Grandpa had painted lay split in half, face-down in the gray dirt.
The top two floors had crashed straight down, compressing the ground floor into a dense slab.
The basement.
The safe room where they left Lucen.
It lay buried under a mountain of solid concrete and twisted steel beams.
Dead Mawbacks littered the rubble, squashed flat or bearing those same smooth holes through their chests.
Raina’s knees hit the broken road.
The asphalt tore her jeans.
“Lucen…
Kai…” The wind snatched the whisper away.
She stared at the crushed rocks.
A sob ripped out of her throat, echoing off the empty street.
Grandpa caught up a second later, chest heaving.
His hands hung loosely at his sides.
He stared at the crushed shop.
The wind blew his gray hair, carrying blue spores from the forest over the ashes of his home.
He looked at the massive steel beams driven deep into the ground where the basement door used to be.
He looked at the thousands of pounds of rock sitting on top of it.
Raina looked up at his face.
Grandpa closed his eyes.
Lucen couldn’t walk.
He couldn’t lift a steel beam.
“Grandpa,” Raina grabbed his sleeve.
“Grandpa, we have to dig!
He’s down there!
I know he is down there.” Grandpa dropped to his knees in the mud.
“Raina…” “No!
Help me!” She scrambled forward, clawing at a slab of concrete.
Her fingernails scraped against the rough stone, tearing and bleeding.
“We have to get him!
Lucen is trying to push it open!” Grandpa grabbed her shoulders, pulling her backward.
She thrashed and kicked the dirt.
He wrapped his arms around her and pulled her tight against his chest, burying her face in his jacket.
“Stop.
Just stop,” he choked out, rocking her.
“Look at it.” Raina stopped kicking.
She looked at the flat mountain of stone.
“He’s gone, Raina,” Grandpa whispered into her hair.
Tears cut clean lines through the ash on his face.
“Lucen is gone.” Raina buried her face in his jacket and wailed.
Grandpa held her tight.
His chest hitched.
His arms trembled.
After a long time, Grandpa patted Raina’s back.
“Let’s go home,” he whispered.
He looked back down at the crushed shop.
Raina looked up at him.
They had nowhere to go.
Grandpa wiped his face with his sleeve.
He moved to help Raina stand up, then froze.
He stared at a pile of rocks a few yards away.
Something shined in the morning sun.
Grandpa let go of Raina.
He walked over, reached into the dirt, and pulled it out.
A black metal handle.
Deep scratches.
Burn marks.
Kai’s iron baton.
Grandpa’s head snapped up.
His eyes swept the ruined street.
They locked onto a small crater in front of where the shop’s steps used to be.
A mountain of dead Mawbacks covered the hole.
Black shells, sharp claws, and broken legs tangled together.
But they hadn’t just fallen there.
They were stacked.
Grandpa dropped the baton.
He dropped to his knees beside the pile of monsters, grabbed the biggest bug on top, and shoved.
It barely moved.
“Move,” Grandpa growled.
He planted his boots in the dirt, grabbed the monster’s scythe-like arm, and pushed.
The dead monster rolled out of the way with a wet thud.
Another bug lay underneath it.
Sharp edges of alien armor sliced into Grandpa’s hands.
Black blood dripped down his wrists.
He kept pulling.
Raina ran.
“Grandpa!” She slammed into the dirt next to him and started digging.
She grabbed the smaller bugs and hauled them away.
She pulled on wet claws and broken shells.
Black slime coated her hands.
The only sounds were their ragged breathing and the scrape of dead monsters sliding across rocks.
Grandpa’s arms shook violently, but he kept digging.
Then, he froze.
Raina stopped pulling.
He pushed a broken Mawback jaw out of the way.
Down in the dirt, under the slime and the ash, lay a human hand.
Pale.
Covered in dried blood and gray dust.
“Kai…” Grandpa whispered.
He grabbed the wrist and pulled.
The pile of dead bugs shifted and groaned.
One by one, the monsters slid down the sides of the crater, revealing Kai’s body.
Raina slapped both hands over her mouth.
His armor was shredded.
Deep cuts crossed his chest.
His left arm bent at an unnatural angle.
A thick mask of ash and dried blood coated his face.
His chest was still.
“Big brother…” Raina dropped into the hole beside him.
Her shaking hands reached out, wiping the dirt off his cold face.
“Please,” she begged.
Tears dropped onto his cheek.
“Kai, please wake up.” Grandpa reached out with two bloody fingers and pressed them against the side of Kai’s neck.
Raina held her breath.
One second.
Two seconds.
Grandpa fell backward onto his hands.
Breath rushed out of his lungs in a loud gasp.
His shoulders dropped.
Then, his head snapped up.
“MEDIC!” The roar echoed off the broken buildings.
Footsteps pounded against the asphalt.
Three men in white and red medical gear jumped into the crater.
They pushed Raina and Grandpa gently aside, dropped their bags in the mud, and snapped hard plastic braces around Kai’s neck and arm.
“He’s alive!” a medic shouted, ripping open a plastic packet and sticking an IV into Kai’s unbroken arm.
Raina sat in the dirt as they strapped a clear plastic oxygen mask over Kai’s face.
His chest rose and fell.
As the medics lifted the stretcher, Raina looked at the crater walls.
The dead Mawbacks were piled like a thick, armored tent.
When the building fell, the tough alien shells had caught the collapsing rocks, creating a pocket just big enough for one person.
He had survived by hiding under the monsters that were trying to kill him.
The medics rushed away toward the flashing lights of the emergency transports.
The sirens faded into the city.
Grandpa sat in the dirt.
His hands bled.
His clothes were ruined.
Raina crawled over and slipped her small hand into his.
The wind blew through Willow Street, carrying the smell of smoke and the sweet, mutated forest.
Grandpa stood up, his knees popping.
He pulled Raina up.
Before they turned to follow the ambulance, Grandpa looked back at the crushed ruins of the flower shop.
Raina looked too.
At the edge of the broken rocks, poking through a crack in the gray concrete, stood a single white lily.
Its green stem bent almost to the ground under the weight of the ash.
One white petal had been torn off by the wind.
But it still faced the morning sun, glowing in the light bouncing off the distant forest.
Surrounded by crushed buildings and massive piles of dead monsters, the flower continued to bloom.
Grandpa stared at it.
He squeezed Raina’s hand, turned his back on the ruins, and walked away.
Raina walked beside him.
The white flower stayed behind, standing entirely alone in the center of the broken world.
We’ve got gravitational vortexes, exploding monsters, and enough emotional trauma to pay my future therapist’s mortgage.
Speaking of empty voids…
let’s talk about my comment section.
17 chapters, guys.
17!
And it is a ghost town down there.
I’m starting to think my only readers are actual Disaster-Class beasts trying to learn military secrets.
If you are a human being with a pulse, please prove it!
Drop a comment below.
You don’t even have to say anything smart.
Just leave anything that you like if the flower shop scene broke you, or anything if you want Voss to punch me for writing it.
I promise I don’t bite (unlike the Mawlords).
See you in the next chapter!