The sky brought our demise

Almost a year since the incident. Even now I still don’t know how to process any of this. The world has gone to hell and feels like I'm stuck in the passenger seat watching everything get worse, with every immoral action that takes place. I still remember the day this happened, when the world turned into a cesspool of unimaginable horrors. It was october 28th, 2024, I remember that day well. It was a cool autumn day with the wind blowing ever so softly through my hair, the grill smoking up the sky while the burgers were almost done. Then there she was, her long auburn hair flowing through the wind and those hazel eyes that could make my heart skip a beat. She was my lovely wife, the woman I dedicated my entire life to. I miss her everyday but I guess in a way she doesn’t have to see what this world has become and how worse it's gotten and I am grateful for that.

They always showed it in movies, video games and tv shows. They never prepare you though for it, they never prepare you for the sound, they never prepare you for the shockwave that hits your body once they drop. I can remember the discourse but no one ever imagined what would happen. I remember when the middle hit the ground and me and my wife were thrusted backwards against our house, the only thing I could think about when I got up was getting her to safety. I saw that giant cloud in the sky. We were just far enough away to not get hit by radiation. I looked around; the car was tipped, "what the hell am I gonna do" I asked myself looking over at my wife.

I knew at that moment that I was not prepared for anything like this. Nuclear war starts and I'm nowhere near a bunker, my cars tipped over and I have no plan. On top of that my wife was knocked out and I'm pretty sure I pulled something in my leg. All I could think about was how we weren't gonna die out here. I picked her up with all the strength I could muster and limped my way back into our home, I could still hear the siren in the distance.

We were in our bedroom, I held her in my lap. She was coming too. She had asked me what happened. I told her everything I knew. We sat there waiting for the inevitability of our death, we held each other while we waited, and waited……..and waited……..and waited. Before I knew it 3 hours had passed. No more explosions, nothing was happening. I was grateful at the time, don't misunderstand that, but this was all strange.

We walked out into our living room, or in my case I limped out and plopped down on the couch. We decided to turn on the TV to see if it was still working. Amazingly it actually was working. An emergency news bulletin blaring through our house, I could tell the news anchor was scared but trying to keep her composure. The first strange thing I hear from this is that neither the Pentagon or the white house have been struck. Nor have any military bases had any strikes on them. This was strange to me, in any strike you would assume that important places like these would be the first targets hit, but no instead what was hit was just random areas, with what felt at the time no rhyme or reason. In total fifty bombs were dropped in random locations in the united states', these areas proceeded to be labeled as hot zones. We still call them that to this day. Its not like whats there is solely confined to that area either i think truly the end of everything wasn’t when the bombs fell but when THEY came out.

The news had reported that there were 3000 deaths in the United States alone, more than 20,000 on an international basis. The death toll average was surprisingly low for nuclear attacks and none of it made any sense, countries couldn’t even talk about going to war, because simply put nobody could claim dropping the bombs, as a matter of fact all world leaders looked puzzled as to what happened. To this day I still don't know who or what caused all of this.

A week passed and the world tried to keep moving forward but nobody could get this out of their mind. Towns and cities and even whole states were turned upside down, people still feared for their lives and why shouldn’t they? The entire world is running around like a chicken with its head cut off, due to the simple and horrifying fact that we don’t know what is even going on at the time.

I was put on a two week leave from my job at the time, my ankle was sprained and the trauma of almost dying from a nuclear attack also had something to do with it. We still lived in that house, I know what you may be asking dear reader “why would you stay near where a nuclear bomb hit?”. To answer your question, shockwaves travel more miles and we were far away from the actual radiation part of the area. I was sitting at my desk, scrolling through the internet on my laptop and couldn’t escape the many theories that were being debated or argued about ad nauseum. “Aliens, government conspiracy, lizard people”. On and on these people with no idea what was about to happen next..

I looked over at the heart shaped locket she got me for birthday that had her picture in it. “Whenever you’re having a bad day just look and the picture and remember we got this” she said to me with her bright beautiful smile. She was in the other room trying to keep her mind occupied, while I sat there at my desk staring at the locket, I heard it.

Cars drifting down the street, horns blaring in every direction. About six days before this the military had set up points to the hot zone areas keeping people far away from them. When i looked out the window i couldn’t believe it: i saw every known military vehicle except a tank driving away from the hot zone and before i could even acknowledge another second of that i heard the loudest inhumane scream, a sound as if nails on chalkboard had a deep growl to it. That was the final straw right there: I grabbed my wife and the emergency bags we packed and especially the locket and headed out to the car. Before we even got in the car I saw the shadow of something flying overhead going at speeds I couldn't comprehend at the moment.

Driving down the road at the time was the most nerve racking thing at the time. Cars were going fast and everything was going into chaos all around us, for miles all i could see was fire and car exhaust. I looked over at my wife. She was scared, we both were. More than anything I was scared but I couldn't focus on fear. I had to focus on getting us somewhere safe, I had to focus on protecting my wife. I wouldn't let anything bad happen to her. I hate myself everyday for what happened next. Everyday I wish I could go back and change what happened but I can't. It pains me now even in writing this with tears flowing down my face at rapid rate but I will tell it anyway I will not let our story go untold.

We were about fifteen miles away from the house and still going, I wasn't going to stop for anything. Out of nowhere something smashed into the side of my car. I swerved down the road panicking, my heart running a million miles a minute not knowing whats going on with my wife screaming in fear. I did everything to get the car back under control and when I did I floored it. I didn't want whatever it was to catch up to us, but i guess i didn’t give its speed enough credit cause the next i knew our car was flipping through the air.

I woke up to my wife shaking me awake, i felt liquid rushing down my face which turned out to be from my head being cut open. She hugged me tight thanking everything and everyone that i was alive and hugged her back but that blissful moment was interrupted when something landed on our car hood and my mouth opened with fear but no scream would come out. It was horrifying to look at, it had wings that looked like they were made out of mangled flesh and loose mangy hair, its dark yellow eyes, four of them looked as if they covered what was supposed to be a face but instead looked like a melted clay figure. It screamed at us with a horrible raspy scream that could break every nearby window. Then it ripped off the passenger side door: it ripped it off with such strength you would have thought the door was made out of toilet paper. It then ripped my wife out of my arms.

It whipped my wife around like a ragdoll, hurting her. My first attempt at saving her ended horribly when it used its mangled monstrous hand to slap me into my car. I hopped up on adrenaline looking around and saw a tire iron. As it was about to fly away with my wife I stabbed the iron through the back of that things neck, I watched as it writhed in pain on the ground. With its death I was satisfied but for only a mere second until I looked over at my wife. My face dropped as I saw her wounds. I ran over to her screaming and begging for her not to die. The conversation we had has stuck with me ever since.

“Please Rebecca, please don’t i can’t lose you” i said through tears making it hard to see.

She brushed away my tears and shot me that smile that still made me weak at the knees. “I’m sorry Marcus, I don’t think I'm gonna make it” she said “i need you to make me a promise marcus.” she said “anything for you babygirl” i said.

With her hand on my face caressing my cheek she said “survive don’t let these things win. Survive and keep moving, never g-give up.” she said through coughs of blood. “All these years with you have been the best of my life, i l-l-love you.”

“I love you too babygirl. More than anything. I promise.” I said.

She died in my arms right there. I screamed to the sky. I cried. I buried her. I grabbed the locket and kept moving like I promised.

I write this now because one of those monsters has the locket and i’ll be damned if they are going to take away what is most precious to me. They may be trying to take the world but they won’t take my memories. If I return I may write more. The future generations need to what happened. Until then, this is Marcus signing off.