A flash of memory pierces the fog, sharp and unrelenting, dragging me back to a moment that feels as if it belongs to another lifetime.

  I’m crouched in a bell tower, the cold, worn steel of binoculars pressing into my face. The metal feels solid against my skin, grounding me, even as the world below teeters on the edge of collapse. Smoke coils thickly in the air, curling like ghostly fingers around the remnants of what used to be a city. Cambridge. The once-familiar streets now stretch out in desolation, their scars illuminated by the dim, gray light filtering through the ash-choked sky.

  Far off, the Charles River slices through the chaos like a dull, reflective wound. Its surface ripples faintly, mirroring the destruction that lines its banks. The water glints with a distorted beauty, a cruel reminder of the serenity it once offered.

  Below, the streets writhe in stillness and chaos all at once. Buildings stand gutted, their walls crumbled into jagged heaps of brick and twisted metal. Abandoned cars choke the streets, doors flung wide open as if caught mid-scream. Their shattered windows glint menacingly, catching what little light dares to pierce the suffocating haze.

  The stench rises even to my perch, an unholy mixture of burning wood, scorched plastic, and the unmistakable tang of charred flesh. It clings to everything, seeps into my clothes, settles in the back of my throat. My stomach twists, a roiling nausea that no longer has the strength to rise fully to the surface.

  “Anything?” Charlie’s voice breaks through the oppressive silence. It drifts up from the shadows below, soft but laced with tension.

  “Not yet,” I reply, though my voice feels thin, raw from smoke and despair. My words falter as I lower the binoculars for a moment, wiping the grime from the lenses with a sleeve already smeared with ash.

  I sweep my gaze southward, toward Allston. My apartment is—or was—somewhere out there, tucked between a coffee shop and a convenience store where I used to stop for late-night snacks. It was a tiny sanctuary, my little corner of normalcy. Now, it’s nothing but rubble and memories swallowed by the inferno.

  Movement catches my eye, and my breath hitches. A figure stumbles into view, dragging itself forward with a gait that’s become seared into my mind. It’s unmistakable—the lurching, uneven steps, the unnatural sway of a body no longer bound by life’s rhythms.

  I raise the binoculars again, focusing on the shambling form. It’s a man, or what’s left of one. His clothes hang in tatters, barely clinging to a body ravaged by time and hunger. His head tilts unnaturally to one side, as though his neck is struggling to support the weight of his thoughts—or what little remains of them.

  He moves toward a red hatchback, its front end crumpled around the splintered base of a telephone pole. The vehicle’s driver dangles halfway out of the open window, arms limp, head lolling at an angle that makes my stomach churn. The body is a silent witness to its own tragedy, suspended between life and death.

  The figure pauses beside the car, swaying slightly. For a moment, it seems to sniff the air, its movements eerily deliberate, almost human. Then, with a jerky motion, it descends upon the corpse, its claw-like hands tearing at the lifeless flesh with a feral desperation that turns my stomach to ice.

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  The binoculars slip from my trembling hands, clattering against the wooden floor of the tower. The sound echoes sharply, startling in the oppressive quiet. I squeeze my eyes shut, willing the image to dissolve, to fade into the dark recesses of memory where I can’t reach it. But it doesn’t. The sight of those clawed fingers digging into the body, of teeth sinking into flesh, stays with me, a grotesque imprint burned into my mind.

  “Anything?” Charlie’s voice rises again, louder this time, cutting through my spiraling thoughts.

  I force myself to look again, to push past the nausea, the dread. “Just… one,” I manage to whisper, my voice trembling with the effort of holding myself together.

  The silence doesn’t last. A sharp crack tears through the air—a gunshot, unmistakable and jarring. My eyes snap open, scanning the distance.

  Across the river, another figure emerges. This one moves differently—cautiously, deliberately. Alive. A soldier, his silhouette outlined against the haze as he approaches the red hatchback. His weapon is raised, the barrel leveled in front of him as he inches forward.

  “Get out of there,” I whisper under my breath, my voice barely audible over the pounding of my heart. But he doesn’t hear me.

  He doesn’t stop.

  The memory fades, a dim light snuffed out in the abyss of my mind. And yet, its echoes linger, pulling me deeper into the weight of what once was. I’m back in the present—or what I suppose is the present—dragging myself through the shattered remains of the world. The ruins stretch out endlessly, a maze of jagged metal and broken stone that offers no path, no purpose. My body moves on its own, a shambling thing guided by the relentless hunger that claws at my insides.

  But my mind? My mind is stuck in the past.

  It replays the scene in vivid fragments, sharp and unforgiving, like shards of broken glass. I remember him—the soldier. The way he moved with purpose, each step careful, deliberate, as if he believed he could outmaneuver the chaos. For a moment, I thought he might succeed.

  But then he hesitated.

  It was the briefest of pauses, a heartbeat at most. Maybe he caught sight of something in the wreckage, or maybe he heard a sound that set his instincts on edge. Whatever it was, that hesitation sealed his fate.

  From the shadows, they came. At first, it was just one—a hunched figure with torn clothes and a hollowed-out gaze. Then another emerged, and another, their movements jagged but unified, like puppets on strings pulled by the same cruel hand. They surrounded him, drawn to the sound of his weapon, to the smell of life that clung to him like a beacon in the darkness.

  He fired again and again, the muzzle of his rifle flaring in the ash-dimmed light. Each shot echoed through the ruins, a desperate cry swallowed almost instantly by the silence that followed. He aimed with precision, dropping one after another, but for every one he put down, two more took its place.

  Their hunger matched my own, I realize now—raw and insatiable, an all-consuming need that drowned out reason and fear. They swarmed him, clawing, biting, pulling him down in a tangle of limbs and teeth. I remember the way he screamed, the sound of it cutting through the air like a blade, and the wet, tearing noises that followed.

  And yet, even now, I can’t fully remember how it ended.

  The memory blurs, edges fraying like an old photograph left too long in the sun. Did he go silent quickly, his screams snuffed out as they overwhelmed him? Or did he keep fighting, refusing to surrender to the inevitable until the very last moment? I don’t know. I’ll never know.

  But I know it wasn’t good.

  The memory loosens its grip, releasing me back into the present. The ruins stretch endlessly before me, and I shuffle forward, the hunger pulling me like a leash. It doesn’t matter where I go—only that I keep moving.

  And yet, even as my body trudges forward, my mind lingers on the soldier, on the way his humanity was stripped away in those final, frantic moments. I feel it now, the same thing happening to me, piece by piece. The past is slipping away, eroding like the buildings around me, until all that’s left is the hunger.

  It’s always there. Waiting. Watching. Consuming.