In the near-future, Earth is ravaged by nuclear detonations and out-of-control wildfires, society crumbles into a lawless wasteland. The cataclysm, known as The Burning, leaves most of the Earth scorched, the air thick with ash, and the remnants of civilization scattered and broken. This post-apocalyptic landscape is where Maya Greene, a 32-year-old former ER nurse, must navigate not only the physical dangers of survival but also the emotional wreckage of her past.
Lihat lebih banyakIt started with the smell. A strange and suffocating thickness in the air that clung to the back of my throat, like I’d swallowed dirt. I remember stepping out of the hospital after a long shift, the Seattle skyline stretching out in front of me, and feeling like something was wrong. The sky was a dull gray, not the usual drizzle or overcast we were used to. This was darker, heavier. I called Chloe.
"Hey, are you seeing this?" I asked, squinting up at the murky sky. "Seeing what?" Chloe’s voice came through, light and distracted. She was probably painting or working on one of her sculptures. She had an artist's mind, always somewhere else. I glanced at my watch. 3:15 PM. Too early for the sun to set but too dark to be anything normal. "The sky, it’s... weird." I couldn’t put it into words at the time. Not that it would’ve mattered. Words wouldn’t have saved us. "Relax, Maya. Probably wildfires again. You know how summers have been the last few years. I’ll be fine." I’ll be fine. I can’t count how many times I replayed that conversation in my mind. I should've insisted she come to the hospital with me, should’ve made her leave her apartment. But I didn’t. I let her stay. And then the world ended. The first bomb hit an hour later. I was in the ER when the ground shook, a slow rumble at first, like thunder that didn’t stop. The lights flickered, and then the building trembled—a violent jolt that sent monitors crashing to the floor. The power flickered out, screams echoed down the hallway, and that’s when the panic spread. People with half-sewn wounds and broken bones tried to get up, pulling out IVs and limping toward the exit. I remember shouting for people to stay calm, but no one listens to reason when the world is shaking apart beneath their feet. The second bomb hit not long after, farther away but still close enough to rattle my bones. I ran outside, expecting to see smoke, fire, something that made sense. But what I saw instead was worse. The sky had turned black. A thick, swirling cloud of ash and smoke filled the horizon, blotting out the sun. I could taste it in the air, feel it in my lungs. It wasn’t just Seattle. The emergency broadcasts started rolling in on every frequency, static-filled reports of cities burning, bombs falling. 'The Burning,' they called it. I don’t know who coined the term, but it fit. I tried calling Chloe again. No answer. I called her ten, maybe twenty times, each call going straight to voicemail. My heart pounded in my chest, the world around me growing more chaotic by the second. People were fleeing in every direction, like ants scattering in a fire. Some had cars, some didn’t. Most just ran, faces streaked with soot and fear. I had to find Chloe. I had to get to her. I made it to her apartment just as the fires started. By then, the air was thick with ash, visibility down to a few feet. The city was already in chaos—people smashing windows, looting stores. I pushed my way through the panicked crowds, my mind singularly focused on one thing: Chloe. When I reached her building, the flames were already licking at the base of the structure. Thick black smoke poured from the windows, and I could hear the crackle of the fire spreading. I screamed her name, running for the stairwell. I barely made it two flights up before the heat became unbearable. The air was too thick, too hot. I couldn’t breathe. "Maya!" I heard her voice. Faint. Desperate. I tried to push forward, but the flames were too fast, too aggressive. I remember coughing, choking on the smoke, my skin burning as I reached for the door to her floor. It was hot, searing pain shooting up my arm. I pulled back, tears streaming down my face. I couldn’t get to her. I couldn’t get to her. "Chloe!" I screamed, but my voice was swallowed by the roar of the flames. I don’t know how long I stood there, the fire raging all around me, before one of the neighbors dragged me out. I fought them, clawed at them, screaming Chloe’s name until my voice gave out. But it didn’t matter. She was gone. The weeks after The Burning are a blur. I wandered the ruins of Seattle, the sky perpetually covered in a blanket of ash, the fires never fully extinguished. The air was thick, toxic in some places. People died from simple things—smoke inhalation, dehydration, infection. The world had turned into a graveyard, and I was just another ghost haunting the ashes. I don’t know how I survived. Maybe because I didn’t care if I did. I scavenged what I could, moving from one burnt-out building to the next. There were other survivors, of course, but we didn’t talk much. Trust was a luxury none of us could afford. People killed for food, for water, for a pair of shoes. The worst ones killed just because they could. I kept moving, kept to myself. That’s when I found the radio. It was buried under a pile of rubble in an old electronics store, half-crushed but still functional. I don’t know why I started fiddling with it. Maybe it was the silence that got to me, the oppressive quiet that had settled over the world in the wake of the destruction. Or maybe I just needed to hear another voice, even if it was just static. I turned the dial slowly, listening to the hiss of white noise, my fingers trembling. I was about to give up when a voice crackled through the static. “…help… survivors… if you can hear this… Eagle’s Nest…” I froze, my heart racing. Survivors. I pressed the radio closer to my ear, adjusting the dial as carefully as I could. "…repeat, if you can hear this… survivors at Eagle’s Nest…" Eagle’s Nest. A group of survivors. Maybe it was a trap. Maybe it wasn’t. My mind raced, torn between hope and fear. Could I trust them? Could I trust anyone? I glanced around the charred remains of the city, the weight of my solitude pressing down on me. How long could I survive on my own? How long did I want to survive? I didn’t have a choice. I slung my pack over my shoulder, took a deep breath, and stepped out into the ashes.The past will always be there” Eli said, standing up and brushing the dirt from his hands. “But it doesn’t have to own you. You’ve got your whole life ahead of you, Maya. Don’t waste it looking back.”That night, as I lay beside Ben in the small room we shared, Eli’s words echoed in my mind. I stared up at the ceiling, watching the shadows dance in the dim light of the lantern, my thoughts a tangled mess.Ben shifted beside me, his arm brushing against mine. “You okay??” he asked, his voice quiet in the darkness.I turned to face him, my heart heavy but full of something I hadn’t felt in a long time—hope. “Yeah,” I whispered. “I think I’m starting to be.”He smiled, his hand finding mine under the covers. “Eli’s a smart guy.”I laughed softly. “Yeah he is.”We lay there in silence for a while, the warmth of his hand grounding me, making me feel like maybe, just maybe, things could be okay.“You ever think about the future?” I asked, my voice barely above a whisper.Ben was quiet fo
I glanced at him, wiping sweat from my brow. “Yeah. It’s peaceful.”He gave a small nod, his focus still on the soil. “Peace is hard to come by these days. Harder to hold onto.”I knew what he was getting at, but I didn’t say anything. I wasn’t ready to talk about it. Not yet.Eli didn’t push, but after a few more moments of silence, he added, “You’re still carrying it, you know. The weight of everything that happened before.”I clenched my jaw, my hands pausing in the dirt. “I don’t have a choice.”“There’s always a choice,” Eli said quietly. “The past can burn you if you let it. But the future is what you make of it.”I stared at him, the words sinking in like stones dropped into a still pond. I wanted to argue, to tell him he didn’t understand, that he couldn’t possibly know the kind of guilt I carried. But then I remembered what he had told me that night by the fire—. that he had been part of Project Inferno, that he had helped design the weapon that burned the world.If anyone un
The mornings at Eli’s farm were quiet, the kind of quiet that felt almost sacred in a world like ours. No distant gunfire, no grim-faced survivors shouting orders, no smoke curling from the ruins of a settlement. just the soft rustle of wind through the crops, the occasional lowing of a cow in the distance, and the steady rhythm of our footsteps as we worked the land. The air smelled of earth and life. It was a stark contrast to the acrid tang of burning metal and ash that had seemed to cling to me for years.Here, the only smells were simple ones: the sweetness of hay, the faint iron tang of soil on my hands, and sometimes the sharp, almost medicinal scent of the herbs Eli kept hanging in the barn. It had been weeks since Ben and I arrived, stumbling through the farm’s weathered gates with nothing but the clothes on our backs and the weight of our pasts. I hadn’t planned to stay. I wasn’t even sure what had driven me to keep walking after the settlement fell apart. The idea of s
As we ate in the flickering firelight, I couldn't help but marvel at how normal it all felt. Almost like the world hadn't ended, like we were just travelers stopping at a kind stranger's house for the night. But as the evening wore on, I noticed a change in Eli's demeanor. He became quieter, more thoughtful, his gaze lingering on us in a way that made the hair on the back of my neck stand up. "You two've been through a lot," he said finally, breaking the comfortable silence that had settled over us. It wasn't a question. "We've seen our share," Ben replied carefully, his spoon pausing halfway to his mouth. Eli nodded, leaning back in his creaking chair. "I've seen a lot too. More than I'd like, truth be told." He paused, seeming to wrestle with something internal. "I wasn't always a farmer, you know. Before The Burning, I worked for them. The government. I was part of something... something I'm not proud of." My heart stuttered in my chest, and I felt Ben go still beside me. We'd
As we got closer, the outline of a small farmstead came into view. It was nestled against the edge of a narrow stream— miraculously still running —and surrounded by a patch of what looked like actual crops. Corn, maybe, or something that used to be corn before the world ended. The sight of growing things, of life persisting despite everything, made my throat tight with emotion."Look at that" I whispered, almost afraid to speak too loudly and break whatever spell was keeping this place alive. "Actual plants. Growing. How is this possible??"Ben shot me a cautious look, ever the pragmatist. "Could be a trap. You know how some groups operate. Make something look too good to be true, wait for desperate people to come running.""It could be," I admitted, remembering all too well the stories we'd heard about such things. "But I don't think we have much choice. We need water, and this place looks like it has it. Besides, if it were raiders, they'd probably have worse security. This place
The wasteland stretched out before us, endless and desolate, a s ea of cracked earth and skeletal trees marking the landscape as a constant reminder of the world we had lost. Despite the harshness of it all, there was something oddly freeing about being out here, away from the settlement and the ghosts of the past that haunted its walls. Out here, it was just Ben and me, two souls trying to carve out something new in the ruins of what had been.Our footsteps crunched against the dry dirt as we walked, the horizon shimmering with heat in the distance. The sun hung high and merciless in the cloudless sky, and the only sound was the wind cutting across the plains, whipping at the tattered edges of our clothes. My muscles screamed with each step, my throat parched and raw, but there was a strange kind of peace in the rhythm of walking. One foot in front of the other. Keep moving. That was the only way to survive in this broken world.I glanced over at Ben, studying his profile as he wa
He hesitated, his brow furrowing as if he were trying to find the right words. “There’s something I need to tell you. Something I should have told you a long time ago.” My stomach tightened. I didn’t like the sound of this. "Ben..." He stopped walking, turning to face me fully, his expression serious. "I knew about Chloe." The air seemed to leave my lungs all at once. "What....?" "I knew about her involvement in The Burning." he said, his voice steady but heavy with regret. "I....I knew before we ever got to the settlement. Before we ever found those documents." I stared at him, my mind racing. "You knew? ...how?" He sighed, running a hand through his hair. “It’s a long story, but... back when we were with that other group, before we got separated, I came across some intel. I didn’t understand all of it at the time, but Chloe’s name was there, tied to Project Inferno. I didn’t know the full extent of her involvement, but I knew enough to realize she wasn’t just some random survi
I packed the last of my things into a worn canvas bag. The light was soft, almost golden, but it felt like a lie. There was nothing soft about the world we lived in now. Nothing golden about the reality we faced.I tightened the strap on my bag, my hands trembling slightly. It wasn't the weight of the bag that made me shake. It was the weight of the decision I'd made. After everything— after uncovering the truth about The Burning, after confronting Wells, after the chaos of the past few weeks— I was leaving.I couldn't stay here anymore. The settlement wasn't my home; it never had been. I had only stayed because I thought I could help. Thought I could make things right. But the more I tried, the more I realized that the answers I was searching for weren't here. They were out there, somewhere beyond the borders of this broken place.Ben was waiting for me by the gate, his silhouette dark against the pale sky. He had packed light, just like me. Neither of us had much to take. The wo
Wells' jaw tightened. “We weren’t going to let the government cover it up. My unit was sent to investigate, yes, but we weren’t loyal to the people who caused this. We wanted to expose them. To bring the truth to light.” I laughed bitterly, the sound hollow in the small room. “The truth? You think exposing the truth is going to fix any of this? It’ll destroy what little we have left. People will lose whatever faith they have in rebuilding. Civilization will collapse all over again.” Wells didn’t flinch. “People deserve to know the truth, Maya. They deserve to know what was done to them.” I shook my head, the anger giving way to exhaustion. “And what happens when they find out? What happens when they realize that their own government burned them alive, that Chloe —someone they trusted —was part of it? What do you think that’ll do to them? To us?” Wells stepped closer, her voice calm but insistent. “It’s not about what it’ll do to us. It’s about justice. About holding the people res
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