I was standing at the church door that opened to the street.
The first thing I noticed was the wind and the smell.
Something putrid hung in the air, thick and suffocating.
The church looked like it had been abandoned for a long time. Cracked columns greeted me at the entrance; the doors had long since rotted away, leaving behind chunks of heavy wood still clinging to rusted iron hinges.
Before I could take in more, still disoriented, I leaned against the stone wall and felt the moisture seeping through each block.
My legs trembled, though I didn't know why, and because of that, I tripped over the wooden threshold. In a desperate attempt to soften the fall, I stretched out my hand to catch myself.
The moment my palm hit the ground, it was as if splinters drove straight into my wrist.
I gasped in pain and screamed.
— "What the hell… damn it…"
It felt broken, and the sudden pain made me howl for a while.
— "Where am I?"
I couldn't help asking myself as I looked around.
Still lying on the floor, I stared toward the unfamiliar entrance before me.
It was undoubtedly a church. I could still see the pews from where I was, though I didn't recognize the place.
Breathing heavily through the pain, I got up with effort, my legs still shaky now with what was probably a broken wrist.
I leaned on the thick pillars by the door and looked outside.
— "Holy shit…"
From where I stood, I could see the city — or what was left of it.
A mass of glass and melted metal, tilted bridges rising like shadows. This modern world had been reduced to ruins.
My heart filled with horror at the sight before me. It looked like something straight out of a movie.
The wind howled through the skeletons of skyscrapers towers that once touched the clouds, now bent and broken like exposed bones. The cracked concrete revealed twisted steel.
The streets looked like dry rivers of asphalt, covered by a thin layer of ash. Cars, fused into misshapen lumps, seemed to have melted where they stood, and fallen lampposts crossed the avenues like makeshift crosses.
Farther ahead, a bridge had collapsed under its own weight or under the weight of something else. At its base, what remained of a river was a thick, pitch-black sludge.
It was late afternoon, and the last light of the sun only made the scene more decadent.
There were no human sounds no voices, no engines. Only the distant cawing of starving birds, or whatever was left of them, and the occasional cracking of collapsing structures.
The sound of the wind screamed in my ears.
My legs trembled harder. In the distance, birds croaked, their echoes making everything seem worse.
The wind carried that same stench again. It made me sick to my stomach.
Still in pain and trembling, I forced myself to move and walked toward the start of the stairway.
I looked down and chills shot up my spine as my face went pale.
The church's staircase was covered in a shapeless red mass.
Bodies lay scattered along every step.
Men, women… or at least, they might've been.
Some were intact. Others had turned into revolting lumps of flesh.
They looked like they'd been running toward the top. Most of the ones still vaguely human were near the summit. But that didn't make it any less horrifying.
Their mouths were frozen open, caught in a final, desperate scream. Some had hollow sockets; others had eyes dangling by threads of tissue that seemed to fight not to fall.
I froze.
My first instinct was to run, but my legs refused to move, and I collapsed to my knees at the top of the stairs.
The second instinct was to vomit.
With no better option, I went with the second.
The acid burned my throat, the sound echoing too loudly grotesque, reminding me of what lay before me.
The smell grew worse, bile mixing with the iron in the air.
I looked down and saw the liquid seeping into the cracks between the stones, darkening them slowly.
The world spun.
I was exhausted. I didn't even know what I was doing there.
My legs wouldn't obey. From where I was, I couldn't escape the nightmarish scene before me.
I crawled toward the church's doorway, every breath burning inside me.
Tears of fear streamed down my face with each gasp.
With great effort, I reached the threshold, panting.
Everything felt wrong.
I didn't know where I was. I couldn't remember ever knowing this dead city.
The fear of the unknown made me tremble even more.
Then came the sound.
It was like the song of a whale but deeper, more grotesque.
I lifted my gaze toward the shadows of what had once been a city and that's when I saw it.
A scream took shape in my throat, but I covered my mouth, terrified of making a sound.
Far away, towering over the ruins larger than skyscrapers something alive was rising. A pulsating mass, growing like an ulcer at a terrifying rate.
From this distance, I couldn't be sure. It looked like flesh, but not quite. It glistened between shades of red and dark brown, and it made a rhythmic, wet, chewing sound.
The thing moved slowly, but wherever it passed, it destroyed everything.
It roared again, and the sound rippled across everything like waves.
At the church entrance, tiny bubbles began forming in the cracks of the stone floor. As they appeared, they burst almost immediately, releasing yellow vapor that smelled of fresh blood and sulfur.
Horrified, I dragged myself back inside the church, though I forced myself to keep my eyes on the nightmare outside.
As the yellow mist grew thicker, I saw them
Eyes opening, or something like eyes, staring at the church with hatred, but too afraid to approach.
And in the middle of it all, one of those things noticed me.
The terror was physical.
My stomach tightened, my skin prickled, and my hands began to tingle.
I tried to crawl farther back, but failed.
The ground seemed to move.
I saw a violet light illuminating the place.
A second later, everything vanished.
The sound of the stones, the stench of sulfur, even the chill in the air all replaced by a nauseating vertigo, as if the world had turned inside out.
My vision blurred into spots of light. My stomach twisted again.
When I opened my eyes, I was lying in the middle of a street.
When I looked up, I saw descending skyscrapers rising around me and froze.
I knew where I was.
Unlike the feeling I had in the church, the sky here was even heavier. The streets, cloaked in gray fog, seemed ready to swallow everything whole.
Around me were shops with shattered windows, facades stained with something dark. I couldn't tell if it was rust or blood.
I tried to stand, still trembling but this time, I managed to stay upright.
I took a step… and tripped over something.
I fell onto something soft, so the pain wasn't too bad — but I wasn't relieved.
The sound of the impact was wet, low, grotesque.
I looked down and my blood ran cold.
It was a body. Or what was left of one.
The skin stretched like torn paper, and the face… the face was gone.
The scream stuck in my throat.
I scrambled up, stumbled back and fell again.
When my back hit the ground, the air left my lungs.
Only the strange gray sky and the last glimmers of light at the tops of the buildings filled my vision now.
And then, out of nowhere, the world around me froze.
A purple light flickered in front of me, like a floating hologram, and lines began to take shape clean, sharp, absurdly clear.
At the center, in cold, pulsing letters, a single word appeared:
"SURVIVE."
I stared at it, unsure what to do.
My heart pounded so hard I could hear it.
Suddenly, a metallic sound echoed in the distance.
I turned, still unsteady.
Through the fog, I saw shadows a group approaching. Three, maybe four people, dressed in worn clothes, faces covered with scarves and makeshift hoods.
At the front was a woman.
Her skin was marked by grime and sun, her hair tied carelessly, her eyes sharp and cold as a blade.
She and her group were walking toward me.
Clumsy, I managed to stand and face them.
She carried an improvised weapon on her shoulder a metal pipe or rod and an old backpack on her back.
She studied me for a few seconds.
When she finally spoke, her voice was hoarse but steady.
— "Who are you?"
I opened my mouth to answer, but no sound came out.
Only the pounding of my heart echoed in my head.
"Who am I?"