In the city centre, chaos prevailed. Screams could be heard everywhere and the streets were either empty or crowded with people desperate to save their lives.
Emergency sirens and evacuation bells were blaring, while loudspeakers throughout the area were relaying the same message.
[Negacion attack detected! State of emergency declared! Please move immediately to the designated shelter areas. Take only the essentials as you leave. Arrival of defence forces imminent!]
***
A family of three, a father, a mother and a little nine-year-old boy, were running through the streets of a district not far from the area where the first explosion had taken place.
Fires had broken out in several places and debris were flying everywhere, either because of the explosions or because of the very reason behind all the commotion: the creature that was apparently moving extremely slowly, in the far distance.
They turned a corner and sought shelter in one of the underground refuges whose entrance pointed not far ahead.
People were waving their arms at them, urging the family to hurry before some other unpleasant surprises occured. Seeing this, the man encouraged his wife to rush and they were almost there, just a couple dozen metres and they would have made it to safety.
However, when they were about twenty metres from their destination, a huge piece of debris landed with a deafening thud just a few metres in front of them.
The crash scared the refugees in the shelter and they immediately closed the doors of the refuge, leaving the family desperately begging.
The rubble, a destroyed section of a building whose protruding metal bars were covered in blood and bits of flesh, finally collapsed to reveal a corpse lying underneath it, with shreds of body tissues hanging here and there on the many rods that constituted the internal skeleton of the debris.
The woman vomited at the horror and the young boy fainted. Only the man managed to retain a semblance of lucidity.
He grabbed his wife's hand and lifted the boy onto his shoulder with one arm, then urged her to resume the infernal run.
"Come on! We can't stay here!"
He pulled his wife even harder and they continued on their way to another shelter, if they could get there safely.
The footsteps of the little group echoed in the strangely deserted street where they were. He saw a sign a few metres away indicating that the refuge was still about ten kilometres off.
"You've got to hold on, we're nearly there!" said the man, addressing his panicking wife.
Of course, it was a lie.
But just as they rounded a junction and entered a tunnel, another piece of debris came crashing down, this time so close that the shockwave threw the man forward.
As though the world had lost its lights, he found himself plunged into a sudden darkness and a deafening whistle rang in his ears, blocking out all other sounds, with the exception of the evacuation alarm siren, a few dozen metres away, which sounded so distant that he thought it was echoing where the creature might still be.
He fainted.
****
When the man woke up, he was hurting from every part of his body, and still felt disoriented.
'How much time have I been knocked out?'
He felt a warm liquid running down his forehead and with what little strength he could muster, touched the top of his cranium.
He winced.
His hand came back wet and covered in a reddish fluid.
Blood.
He twisted and tried to shift to the left to get up, but didn't feel the slightest contact with his left leg.
Stunned, he looked down and saw an abomination that burned itself into his mind, making him teeter on the edge of madness.
His wife, or what was left of her, was buried under the debris of the tunnel's roof that had collapsed just behind him.
Only her right arm and part of her hair were visible, not to mention the cerebral matter and blood that flowed like a quiet puddle of water and mud after a rainy day.
The wedding ring, still on the now deceased's annular, was slowly slipping from her finger, accompanied by a tiny cascade of blood. The hand itself was still holding the man's foot, which had separated from the rest of his body, some of the tendons visible and the bones piercing flesh that no longer had any sensation.
The man screamed and vomited until his vocal cords broke.The horror was so strong that instead of fainting, it pulled him from the grip of unconsciousness that was gaining ground in his head.
But not for long.
He felt dizzy, and then, as if gravity no longer had a hold on his body, he felt like he were no longer touching the ground, floating but at the same time falling from a height he couldn't describe.
In reality, he was losing his mind.
Yet in the darkness that had begun to form in his mind, a light gleamed, bringing him back to the cruel reality of the world he was living in.
His son.
He absolutely had to find him and make sure he was all right. With an almost superhuman effort, given the state he was in, he managed to drag himself to a corner where he leaned back.
As if fate had played a trick on him, a couple metres away, there was an open car with a rope hanging from it.
The car itself had been damaged — surely by the tunnel's crash - and the wheels were lying flat, devoid of air.
Fate had really decided to give him an unpleasant surprise that evening.
'It won't be that easy to get out of this hell... Right?'
The man reached out and took the rope, then, rummaging in the glove compartment, found a box cutter, a small bottle and a first aid kit.
He sat down on the seat and used the kit to treat his stomach wound as best as he could and at least tourniquet his foot, then tore off his already damaged shirt and, breathing as hard as he could, pulled his amputated foot towards him. He then tied his foot with the shirt and bandaged the fabric around the wound.
The shirt soaked up the blood, immediately turning red.
At least the bleeding had slowed down.
He searched the car as best as he could and found three small bottles of water, an already opened packet of biscuits, a backpack with some documents inside and a torch that no longer worked.
He got rid of the torch and the documents in the bag, then packed the rest inside.
Once he'd done that, he hopped out and picked up a long, twisted metal bar lying nearby, and used it as a walking stick.
Really, it all seemed like a very bad joke from the universe.
He got to his foot, not without pain, and with the help of his improvised cane, set out to find his son.
The amputee shouted his boy's name, full of anguish, trying not to imagine the worst and, above all, trying to swallow the lump of anxiety stuck in his throat.
He had to remain solid in this moment of absolute distress, at least for his child for whom he was the only family left.
A voice answered him.
A miracle!
After a few minutes of searching in the tunnel, using the sound of the boy's voice as a guide, he found him not far from the exit and crouched down beside him with much difficulty.
"Come on, Luka. We've got to get out of here."
"But... Mum! Mum, where is she?" asked the little boy, who did not yet know the horrible fate that had befallen his mother.
The man - trembling with sadness and anger - raised his head, exhaled deeply and returned his gaze to his little one.
"She's managed to get out, she's waiting for us in the shelter." He said, hugging his son tightly.
"R-Really?"
The boy's question stuck like a dagger in the man's heart.
He wanted to answer but coughed, and bringing his hand up, saw blood, wiping it away immediately.
He managed a smile.
"But of course. She's worried about us. Come on, we've gotta get to her quickly!"
He helped the child to get up, leaning himself against a pile of rubble nearby and on his walking stick, and they set off.
***
The night was still young and, unfortunately, the cries continued to echo throughout the city, which continued to suffer the assaults and devastation of the Negacion, which was now moving around illogically, without any real purpose - like an animal strutting aimlessly through a jungle.
From the distance, they couldn't exactly see the creature, and didn't even bother try to know more — escape being what matters the most — but the man could see the silhouette of the monster roaming and jumping from a building to another, in the far distance, destroying them as it did so.
He turned his head, preferring to focus on both his survival, and more importantly, that of his son.
'I hope it doesn't come this way!'
The two survivors walked four and a half kilometres, with difficulty because of the father who was now disabled, but they were still a long way from the next refuge, still some six kilometres away.
On the way they could only see the destruction that continued to spread.
After painstakingly negotiating one of the gravel boulders, the size of a semi-trailer, they came to a fork in the road that led to a wasteland full of knee-high weeds.
The grass was infested with insects that took every opportunity to sting and bite the feet of the two survivors, making escape even more difficult than it already was, between the amputated limb that was weakening the father — who was trying with all his might, and more, not to sink into unconsciousness — by draining him of blood, and the child who was beginning to feel exhausted by what was becoming a long exodus towards the shelter.
There, they heard voices coming from an abandoned warehouse and the father, more than exhausted and weakened, suggested to his son that they go in there too and take a break.
'I just hope we don't get any unpleasant surprises.' he thought as they made their way towards the building, whose facade was already covered in moss, weeds and rust.
Then, they entered the building