My body rendered to bruises on a feeble frame of bone, my mind vibrating within my skull. Far beyond fatigue, my eyes were swollen with weariness, and that hot cactus burning from crying out of exasperation and fear for such extended tenures. I sat on the steps that overlooked the smashed-up warehouse, the collapsed machine-garage, and most directly, the intersection of two crumbling paved courses that were immersed in a rich beam of morning sunlight. For most, even before last night, our base, this dogged dwelling would be considered stygian at best, as our establishment was hewn from a cold-war era bunker complex. The dew was in the air, everything was slightly moist from the whimpering of rain that went unnoticed during the rapturous events that beset our encampment. The floodlights were off, or the generator had been destroyed.  Ardent streaks of light bathed the concrete, dissipating the damp splotches that dotted the walkways. I am so bitterly familiar with the shock had when a grenade detonates nearby, that instant disorientation, and the nauseating sensation that your bones are vibrating to a terrible tenor. My eyes slowly were drawn to a soft close, but I knew that sleep was fundamentally unobtainable. The bricks behind me and beneath me were pocked with bullet holes and blood; the sleeping quarters were in ruins, only through a half-blasted door. Bodies of friends and enemies were left in cold peace, decorating my dorm. My SKS rested on my back, and it would appear menacing in the manner that it had positioned the barrel to aim directly at the odd knot on the back of my skull. No harm possible, I was dry of any ammunition, and I’m sure I was not alone in this factor. I stood up, my legs trembled at first, but I pushed my exhaustion to a later time, and paced onward to the sunlight crossroads not ten meters from my place of rest.

As I waited in the intersection, my eyes were filled by the glint of the sun, just barely rising through the naked trees. Dawn and dusk are united in such an indescribable feeling of twilight. Birds sang carelessly, darting in and out of view, and a slight wind would stir up gusts of sand and soot. In an indeterminable distance, a faint purr emanated from a small vehicle, probably a jeep. So much spent gunpower left a briny tinge that permeated all points around me. I could still see an outline of the moon, where the water tower used to be, which is where the invasion was fronted. It could’ve been eleven last night, give or take half an hour, that the siren began droning, and between the klaxons the keeper would shout where the breach had occurred. I was on second call, so the first group went in, thinking it would be a quick pogrom of thieves and then a sweep, and usually, they’d be right. I was just about to find a resting spot for the night when I heard the second alarm, calling for the second wave to reach the water-tower’s wall. I leapt to action before I even thought of what this implied, either that the invasion was too large for a single front, or that the first had been destroyed. Neither of proved to slow my will, as I made my way to the barrier of sandbags. Rushes of color sped beside me, opposite of my direction, which my psyche had optimistically dubbed as medics. It took a moment for me to process that I was alone, standing where sandbags had once made a small fort. I turned my head just enough to see the eyes of my comrades, caught in sudden impenetrable horror. It was that terrible split second that lasts for eons, their faces were drained of color, their shoulders drooped, jaws slightly unhinged. The rushes of color that sped beside me were not medics, but, for lack of a better word, monsters. I didn’t know what to do, I’d been trained by drunken family members where to shoot and how, but my training had only ever applied to humans who behave like drunken family members.

Needless to say, I had to figure out my life on my own. I read enough to understand that when I saw my friends faces blench to white, my fight or flight impulse kicked in—on both ends. I ran to the nearest point that I was told to keep secondary to the sandbags, which was a disembodied car door resting against a carbine fence. The window was half open, and I could fire somewhat accurately through the links of the fence, even though my sleeves got caught up in the razorwire. My gun, then an AKS, was suddenly thrown from my hands as the fresh carcass of my old bunkmate collapsed on top of me. Without hesitation, I took the grenade pinned to his chest and I raced to the hangar, about twenty meters from the car door. In this sprint, I felt my heart struggling to maintain my brain’s frantic focus-refocus nature. Hurdling faceless bodies and bizarre atrocities, through clouds of smoke and through ear-splitting sirens, I was past information overload. The entrance was jammed and there was a fire past the helicopter, so the inside was out of question, but the rooftop could promote better visibility and access. I swung my rifle across my back and drove myself; hand over hand, up the rain gutter fixed to the side of the hangar. I immediately took prone position and found my first target. First shot connected at the right shoulder, the second missed, the third connected in the right side of the ribcage, reload. Whatever those things were, or are for that matter, I am still in awe of how much force they could withstand. I put three or four slugs in the four that I killed from up top before any of them fell. I let my gaze slip for an instant while I was reloading to see a young woman beneath the hangar fire point blank at the temple of one of the things, brains and bone ejaculated from it’s skull, and still, it swung it’s arms for a few moments before falling forwards. I dragged the bolt back, locking the magazine in place as I caught someone shouting my name from below. Shouting my name, and pointing to something inside the bunker. From all the noise, I could gather one word from his monologue: ‘Fire!’

I knew there was a fire, but didn’t think that a few burning palettes would pose a notable threat. Once the shouting man had seen my expression change from fear and confusion to a deeper tone of fear and confusion, he bolted off into the darkness of the night, not before clicking on his headlamp. I smelled the toxic plumes of smoke billowing from the mouth of the hangar. The fire had spread to a tanker of jet fuel, mostly empty, but potent nonetheless. I swallowed my grace and pride, and leapt into a conifer hoping that its brittle limbs would break my fall. They tossed me around like a toy and I hit the ground dizzy, but running. I swerved right; as it was the only path currently lit by the emergency lights, and tried to run past my cramping. My feet felt huge and clumsy, my spine was bolted with electricity with every bullet that passed through a pane of glass, just narrowly missing my head. The keeper at the gate bellowed through his bullhorn, informing what was left of our fighting men that there were two more breaches that were now on our backs.

Bits of rock pelted my head, the drizzling rain slicked my hair and the dust matted it and wound it with filth. Maybe five meters in front of me was a wounded man, clearly snapped and his will crushed from shock. His head turned to see me in his trail. It was like I could read his mind, or at least I could understand that there was nothing there. His eyes were unfocused; his face was absolutely expressionless save the clear visage of exhaustion. A wobbly arm directed a handgun at my chest, stopping me cold in my tracks. Just as suddenly as I had realized that my life could soon end, three figures came galloping and howling from the darkness and collided with him in the same brutish force had when a train cuts a bovine in two exploded halves. The things pinned him in the unlit brush, his crackling voice was drowned out with spastic shrieks, the many-tongued faces of the figures were illuminated by brief flashes of gunfire. The creatures continued their noise past the death of the broken man. One of the pack, from his broader shoulders and vast collection of scars and stitches, I assumed it was the alpha, stood over the body and turned to me. I was terrified and fascinated. I read somewhere that there was a theory that the Native Americans couldn’t see Columbus’ ships when he was closing in on their territory, simply because they had never seen something so strange before. The reasoning goes that the human brain will always associate logical explanations for it’s apparent phenomena. Not far from me, a nearly-humanoid life form was staring me down with one of many faces. Each footstep it took was awkward and clamorous. I went numb, head to toe. It’s head was layered with many tones of scalded flesh, thick tendons left it’s jaw and were connected to it’s knees and stomach, and erratically throughout the rest of the body. Greased with pus and bile, useless bulges of knotted muscle migrated around it’s chest. The left arm was missing entirely, and where it was, a lifeless dog’s head, what looked to be a Bukovina sheepdog was stitched to his flesh. Chunks of hair were missing, revealing but scalp and stitches. A length of wire bound the muzzle shut. We were nearly face to face.

My eyes read each scar and wound on the skin like evidence. Deep, phlegmy exhalations spouted from multiple gouges in the body. The distance between us was roughly the length of my gun. Trapped in a showdown, I knew I could not be the first or second to move. My mind raced from one blank to the next. Just as a misshapen hand was drawn into an even more mutated fist, a deep rumbling pulsed through the concrete. My eyes strained, darting to my left, the fire in the hangar had taken hold of the tanker, the releases exploded and pounded the concrete, like a three second timer before a tremendous blast of unbelievable heat, glass and steel belched from the decompressing structure with utmost savagery. A fragment of a deconstructed helicopter left the hangar and hurtled through the flesh of the beast before me, instantly reaming it in two uneven parts. The fiery illumination revealed a baffling spiral of bones, steel, tissue and fat in the lower half. Not seconds later, I had taken to running past the carnage, making hurdles of the beasts beneath me. A second groan rippled from the inferno, and in perfect sequence, the entire structure collapsed within itself, gushing out liquid flame and molten metal. This vomit of inorganic mass melted straight through the other things, the ones that had pinned the insane man down.

Just past the ruins, there was an abandoned bus, most of the windows were blown out and there were no axles for tires, but it was kept around for shelter and the inability to dislocate it. I entered through the doors in the back and crawled to front. Turning the valve to shut the doors took the brawn I didn’t know I had, but it succeeded in sealing me in. I rested beneath the dashboard, collecting what little I had of my mangled mind.
My brow’s sweat was absorbed by my fingerless glove. The cacophony was absolutely maddening, gunshots were mixed with bestial screeches, the sirens still blared, even though they skipped and trembled at the high notes. The ground shook with every motion, the rain was slight but persistent in it’s gentle downpour. With a snap of a second, my eyes and the barrel of my rifle was glued to the left side of the bus. Something hit it, something heavy and broad, but something with give. I peered outside to see three men firing wildly into an oncoming pack of the creatures. The things were each totally different, but the largest ones had dog heads affixed somewhere on their upper bodies, some with rebars poking through their legs, like bones fractured violently. I fired blindly from my port, hoping that my chaotic action would catch at least one from the pack. I leaned out the window after my magazine clicked empty to see that the group had been laid to rest. Two of the three men had survived, the third was soaked through and through with blood and parts dislodged from the oncoming creatures. One of the men saw my head, poking out from the window. Our eyes locked and for a moment, we thought the same frantic, disorganized thoughts. Between us both, our years on this planet, our vast differences and our wealth of mutual knowledge, we still had no comprehension of what was taking place. An interruption occurred; the deep chanting vocals from the darkness were more alarming than any siren or klaxon. Like fine tuned machines, the three of us clicked into defensive positions. Three came from the right, six from the left, and one came from somewhere inside the wreckage of the hangar, completely engulfed in flames. The burning figure staggered, leaving pools of melting skin in his wake, while the others pounced into an onslaught of gunfire. By the time the burning figure hit the ground, the two men in front of me had been devoured by bone and flesh. One of the creatures latched one of it’s many mouths to the headless neck of a dead soldier and ingested a great helping of his blood, gurgling and shivering, the creature was momentarily sedate.

My bravado got the best of me. I rested the barrel of my rifle on the bulbous cranium of the creature and diverted my eyes. Seconds later, I saw a nearly split figure drop to the ground, and the rest pounced to take his place. Thick arms with multiple elbows slammed the sheet metal frame of the bus, and unable to hoist their way in, they congregated at the back door. I recall a mesmerizing flash of fire and blood, and that particular heart-sinking feeling when I reached for my final magazine. With one triumphant blow, the back doors swung open, a wave of the shambling horrors tore inside. My eyes could catch the mucous’ glint from the floodlights outside, the shine told me that there were only more coming. All thirty shots into the cramped column approaching me didn’t break their will. I threw my gun down, my mind reeling faster than comprehension; I whipped the grenade off my chest, and threw it to the gyrating mob. My legs propelled me off the dashboard, through the gap that was formerly a windshield, and out of harms way.

Without any sort of grace, I fell to my back, my skull on the pavement. The stars and embers danced above me, a real feeling of otherworldly transience. The windows of the bus spewed out disorganized meat and tissue and the fleeting flames of a successful A1 grenade. A drop of liquid plastic landed on my neck, a stinging pain so sharp it jolted me awake from my braindead abyss. With my back against a tree, I gathered myself. Unarmed, outnumbered and paralyzed by ignorance and fear. I looked up to the sky, and my eyes detected the distant flicker of a perched sniper. In no time at all, I was sprinting through black smoke and wildly convulsing flesh, diving over bodies and under a fallen tree, I ran without thinking of anything but my one and only destination.

I plucked a Korobov from a stiff on my way, he was legless and headless, so I called it good charity. Without looking, I knew dozens were hot on my trail, I heard the tremendous sniper rounds cutting into the hysterically cackling horde behind me. I scrambled to mount a derelict APC, which I needed to use as a jumping platform to reach the ladder of the watchtower, when I finally saw the first glimpse of the masses behind me. Dozens, each one different, some on all fours, some with four legs, some with multiple twitching dog heads, some with no eyes, the front was incomprehensible, the nature of the beast was against nature itself. I leapt to the ladder not far from the edge of the vehicle, and began my upward frenzy. One of the four-legged things latched itself to the ladder and began a sort of side-ways cartwheel to reach me. Just as I dismounted from the climb, I sent seven rounds through it’s head and neck and shoved it over the edge. Before I could gather myself, the head of another oncoming creature peered over the edge of the ladder. I aimed just between it’s eyes and fired my single remaining shot, which succeeded in whiplash but not in termination. Brimmed with fear, I unleashed my last gust of glycogen with a skull rattling boot to the face, sending the creature toppling over. It fell into a dense congregation similar things, who proceeded to trample it to dust. My hand blindly pawed at the panels behind me until I found a valve, the release for the ladder, which I hoisted into position. The things that had gathered around us dispersed in an animalistic feeding sprawl.

Spent, I didn’t bother to look. My mind was fried. I blacked out for what could’ve been hours or seconds, but I awoke in the darkest pitch night I’d ever seen. The light affixed to my shoulder stuttered on, I left my Korobov on the platform and proceeded up the winding stairs to the snipers nest. He was sitting with his legs crossed in the full lotus position, his entire face concealed by a mechanical mask, part night vision, part breathing apparatus. He fired off four rounds as I watched him, and before he dug into his belt for a new clip, he looked at me. Long, green goggles trembled as they refocused on my face. No smiles, he gestured to a matching rifle and stash of rounds, and a bundle of flares. I sighed and ran my hands through my hair before crossing my legs, and covering my face. I wasn’t trained to perfection, but then again, no one was. Neither of us knew the tricks of the trade, we just knew the trade. I took my time, and I knew that everyone that was not dead already was impossible to save, sans those brave and lucky few who guarded the medical ward and the turrets. The five remaining towers flickered with sniper fire. When night began to fade, the targets were few and far between. Most were almost dead when we got the chance to light them up. The other sniper flipped a coin, and I guessed wrong, which put me on duty to check the groundwork. He lent me his SKS for this endeavor, which I spent on legless creatures out of pity and instinct.

As I stand here, in the sunlight, recalling this story of utmost darkness and fear, I survey this blackened ground, I can see the remaining snipers converging over hot water and a fire. Seven hours from my call to arms, seven hours from when I should’ve been asleep, I turn on my heel and walk back into the shadows. The human body is capable of vast repairs and recuperations, but I don’t think my mind will ever stop shaking.