• Chapter 1


    I’m 32, and my name you ask? My name is Daniel, Daniel Markson. I have to say that city isn’t the city it used to be. It sickens me to think of this, anymore. I’m finally leaving this place for good. I’ve lost so much in this place. So many memories, both good in bad. And, I can’t say what will happen next. Hopefully I’ll get out of the horrors that have taken place in that place. For now I might as well start to explain my story. So listen up cause it’s a long one.

    It all started three years ago, a year before the Decent. I was sitting on my balcony of my fifth story apartment. My wife was in the kitchen area making dinner. She was a fairly good looking woman, about five feet tall, long hair down to the middle of her back. A few years younger than I. Fair skin, compared to my lightly tanned skin. Her eyes just a lovely blue color. Her hair a velvet black color and she always would wear it down, just like I liked it. She had come out to tell me dinner was done when it happened, there was a bright flash in the sky, and then the city went dark. It lasted only a few minutes, but that’s all it took for things to get out of hand. My wife and I had eaten dinner by the time the riots started. I hadn’t listened to the news in a while but I figured now would be a good time. There was something about the flash being a government secret test or something, I didn’t really care, all I knew is they were closing the city off and everyone was extremely pissed about it. I sat on my balcony with my wife sitting next to me when I got a phone call. It was my boss, he said I had the rest of the week off with pay, I merely said ok and the hung up. My wife got basically the same call from her boss. We sat there waiting out some of the night till about eleven or so then we both went to bed, not knowing what we would awaken to.

    The next day my wife and I awoke to a screeching noise coming from outside. Loud would not describe it as my ear started to bleed. When it had stopped my head felt numb and my wife’s ears were bleeding as well. I felt faint, and was dizzy. I saw my wife collapse and I started to walk towards her before I felt like the room was spinning and fell. The last I saw, she was breathing slowly as if sleeping, and then, I blacked out.
    When I awoke it was in a room of which I didn’t know, but it was white, no, an off white color with a blue border around the center of the room. I turned my head slowly and I could see my wife on the bed next to me and a nurse. I was in a hospital and there was a vague feeling of death around the room.
    “Where…where am I?” I had said, though it seemed like my own voice was a few miles away. The nurse had turned and she had a smile on her face. I can’t remember what she looked like exactly.
    “Hospital emergency room deary, I’ll get the doctor” she had said in a colorful tone. I nodded slightly as I sat up slowly, my eyes searching the room. There was an IV in my arm and it was slightly uncomfortable, and I noticed that it was just water inside of it. I ripped the band aid holding it in my arm off then removed the needle carefully, replacing the band aid to stop the minor bleeding. As I looked at my wife’s sleeping form, I noticed her breathing seemed alright. I swung my legs over the side and stood slowly, expecting for dizziness, though it never came. I slowly walked over to my wife and pulled a chair over, sitting in it while placing my hand on hers. Her hand seemed cold and lifeless, and that was bothering me. My eyes darted from place to place, other than us, the beds, the two IV things, and the chair I was sitting it, there was nothing else in here. My mind wondered which hospital I was at, there were two in the city, both equally far from my apartment. Oh, what did it matter at this point. My wife seemed to be waking up and her hand suddenly was warm like it always was and I sighed in relief. I thought we were out of this, maybe for good, but I was wrong. To this day I wish we were never in that hospital.
    Well, I sat there until she opened her bright blue eyes and she looked at me with a soft smile that made most of my worry seem to just melt.
    “Hey honey, how are you?” I asked as she smiled at the sight of me.
    “I’m, okay I think…” She said to me in an uncertain tone. The doctor walked in calmly and looked at us with a bit of an uneasy looked, and we found out why real fast.
    “Listen, I Just might as well tell you two bluntly, you two have been out cold for three months, and you guys weren’t in comas. We don’t have any idea what happened, and since your medically clear, you two can leave when ever.” He had said this in a hurried tone, though, he spoke very slow, which was a bit awkward to hear. My eyes shifted to the waiting nurse with two stretchers.
    “Wait, where are you taking us?” I had said a bit nervous.
    “Somewhere where they have the” the doctor had paused for a moment, “proper equipment to run the needed tests” the doctor finished in that same awkward tone speed combination. I was worried, more for my wife than for myself and I couldn’t think of where they were going to take us, only that we were going now and that we were going in the same ambulance. My eyes looked over the doctor, and I could tell he was serious in all ways. I stood up and held my wife’s hand,
    “I can walk there and sit, you don’t need a stretcher for me” I said calmly. The Doctor merely nodded and the nurse came in with another and helped my wife over to the other stretcher, then started to wheel her out of the room. I followed them to the ambulance and Got in after they had put my wife in. I held her hand and I remember her smiling at me in a gentle way. We never saw any of what happened next coming, and, that forever changed the way I looked at life…

    Chapter 2


    As the ambulance drove, I saw something through the rear window. It was a bright light, but not like the flash that had happened those three months before. My wife had her eyes closed so she didn’t see it but what ever it was, it was descending towards the city, quickly, rapidly. Then instead of it seemingly angular motion it curved down and hit the ground quite hard. I don’t know how large it was but it sent a shock wave the made the ambulance we were in spin and then fall onto its side. I had been rocked around quite violently where as my wife, strapped down in the stretcher, was fine, but on her side as the stretcher had fallen over. She was crying and I slowly stood up and started to unbuckle her. She had always been my delicate little flower and now of all times she was extremely delicate. I stood up with her and opened the door and slowly helped my wife out of the ambulance. I stepped out and what I saw shocked me. Cars were flipped on their side and upside down. Where the object had hit there was a great crater, and, it was at least about fifty feet in diameter. There were people, laying on the ground, dead from the amount of force emitted from the force of the explosion, who were bleeding through their mouth, nose, ears, eyes, and just about every other place you can bleed. My wife was horrified at the sight and only cried more. I held her close as we stood there, people coming from buildings which had the windows shattered and from their cars that were over turned. I could see people crying, as their loved ones had been crushed by a car or killed. I had tears in my eyes but I held them back, I had to be strong for my wife. Police had just started to arrive and the two men who were the technician and the driver of the ambulance were just getting out of it and were confused as to all which happened. They ignored us and started to help people around us that were injured and the like.
    A few hours of helping others, making sure my wife was okay, and trying to call for more help, there was nothing more we could do. My wife and I had been driven home instead of the place we were going to be sent to at first. Once home my wife ran to the bathroom and vomited from all the stress and horrors that had happened. I was in the bathroom with her, trying to comfort her some. Afterwards we sat next to each other on the bed, her clinging to me and I holding her close. We were silent, and there was an ominous feeling in the air that made everything that I had accomplished in my life seem to little and obsolete to the view of everything else in the world. Nothing had seemed to matter more to me than just being close to my wife right now, and there was nothing I wanted more.
    “I love you” I told my wife and she smiled.
    “I love you too” She said to me in a calm tone and looked up at me. I looked down at her and kissed her gently. She kissed me back the same and we held each other close, the time ticking away slowly yet fast. My mind was here and then it wasn’t as I wondered what would happen the next day. The kissed seemed to have lasted forever and then my wife looked up at me with her soft gaze,
    “what’s wrong my love?” she asked me calmly.
    “Nothing…I’m just worried about everything” I said in a calm tone. She looked away, then back at me in a calm way and said to me with such reassurance,
    “everything will be ok, I promise” which made me feel confident and calm. I didn’t want this moment to end, but, it had to as it was getting very late.
    “We should sleep” I said very softly.
    “We should” my wife said in a calm tone. I got up slowly, and got my shorts I usually wear to bed and changed into them, my wife changing into her shorts and t-shirt she usual wore to bed. We laid in bed in each other’s arms waiting for sleep to come. When we fell asleep it must have been nearly morning, for there was a dim glow in the window I recognized as the sun rising…