Wednesday, December 10, 2025, 8:59 AM
Countdown to Extraction: 65 Hours, 42 Minutes Remaining
Sharon's voice ripped through the crowded corridor, violently stripping away the fragile, desperate hope of salvation.
"GET DOWN! BRACE!" she roared, the veteran military physician seizing complete control of the chaos.
She abandoned her calm bedside manner entirely. She grabbed Troy by the collar and violently hauled him downward, physically throwing her own body over Kimmie's swollen belly as the laboring woman screamed in pure confusion.
"Get on the floor!" Officer Daniels bellowed, recognizing the sheer, unfiltered terror in Sharon's command. He tackled a civilian who was still pressing his face against the glass.
The people in the hallway didn't have time to process the order. They didn't have time to ask why the military wasn't landing to save them.
The payload detonated.
It wasn't just an explosion. It was the complete, violent obliteration of the city grid five miles to the south.
The thermobaric flash hit the fourth-floor windows first—a blinding, agonizing arc of white-hot light that turned the dark, smoke-filled morning into a searing, midday glare. It blew right through the narrow gaps in the papered-over glass, casting stark, horrific shadows against the far cinderblock wall.
A fraction of a second later, the concussive shockwave slammed into Memorial Hospital.
The physical impact of the displaced air hit the massive concrete structure like a freight train, but it was the sudden, catastrophic drop in barometric pressure that destroyed the people inside. The hurricane-rated exterior windows groaned, the thick glass spider-webbing violently in their frames, but by some absolute miracle of engineering, they held.
The human body, however, was not built for a vacuum.
The floor literally dropped out from beneath them. The concussive wave ripped through the corridor, picking up every standing adult and slamming them violently into the walls and down onto the hard linoleum. The noise was a world-ending thunderclap that bypassed their eardrums entirely and detonated straight in their chests, instantly sucking the very oxygen out of their lungs.
A wave of profound, debilitating nausea swept through the corridor. Inner-ear fluid violently shifted. Several people immediately vomited on the floor, their equilibrium completely shattered by the blast wave. Noses bled freely as capillaries ruptured from the pressure spike.
The ceiling tiles above them rained down in a heavy, dusty avalanche of pulverized drywall, acoustic foam, and exposed wiring. The dim amber emergency lights flickered wildly, died, and then painfully buzzed back to life through a thick cloud of choking grey dust.
A completely new, suffocating fear settled over the survivors as they choked on the drywall dust. The dead were outside their doors, starving and relentless. But now, the sky was dropping hellfire. Their own military was eradicating them. There was absolutely nowhere left to run.
The hallway looked like the inside of a concrete blender.
Sharon slowly pushed herself off Kimmie, her ears ringing with a high, continuous whine that made the world spin. Her scrubs were completely covered in grey dust. She checked herself quickly—no broken bones, no massive bleeding. She had taken the brunt of the fall on her shoulder.
She looked down. Kimmie was gasping for air, her face completely pale, covered in dust, but she was entirely shielded.
"Doc!"
Sharon snapped her head toward the end of the hall.
Officer Daniels was pushing himself off the floor, spitting blood and acoustic foam. He looked at the heavy, reinforced fire doors separating the maternity wing from the overrun hospital.
The horrific snarling and the snapping teeth had abruptly stopped.
Daniels grabbed his flashlight and shined it through the six-inch gap in the doors.
It was a twisted, apocalyptic saving grace.
The concussive blast had swept right through the compromised hospital corridors on the other side, acting like a massive, invisible battering ram. The sheer force of the pressure wave had knocked the mechanics completely flat. The horde of grey, rotting bodies that had been actively crushing against the doors were currently piled on the floor in a tangled, thrashing heap of broken limbs, struggling mindlessly to get back on their feet.
If that bomb hadn't dropped, the horde would have squeezed through that widening gap in a matter of hours. The sheer weight of the dead would have inevitably snapped the hinges, flooding the maternity ward and slaughtering everyone inside. The thermobaric shockwave had violently reset the board.
"They're down!" Daniels roared, his voice cracking with sheer adrenaline. He spun toward the bleeding civilians pulling themselves off the floor. "The blast knocked them on their asses! I need every able-bodied man right the fuck now! We push these doors shut before they get up!"
Four fathers, faces bruised and bleeding from the fall, didn't hesitate. They scrambled to their feet, sprinting toward the barricade. They threw their combined weight against the heavy hospital beds, boots slipping on the dusty linoleum.
"Heave!" Daniels screamed.
The heavy rubber casters squealed in protest. The men pushed with absolutely everything they had, driving the beds forward. The heavy fire doors slammed completely shut with a resounding, metallic boom, sealing off the gap right as the first mechanic threw itself back against the reinforced steel.
"Lock the brakes! Wedge the chairs under the handles!" Daniels commanded, his chest heaving. He held up a bloody, shaking hand, his voice dropping to a harsh, urgent whisper. "Quiet. Everyone shut the fuck up. If they can't see us or smell us through the gap, they might lose interest. Just stay quiet."
The men nodded, freezing in place, breathing heavily through their noses as the muffled thudding resumed on the other side of the steel. But the gap was gone. The seal held. The bomb had just bought them hours, maybe even another day, of fragile life.
Sharon didn't have time to celebrate the miracle. The corridor was a mess of moans, vomiting adults, and crying children.
She spotted one of the pediatric nurses, Sarah, pulling herself up against a wall, looking entirely dazed with a thick stream of blood running from her nose. Beside her, a tough-looking mother in sweatpants was already wrapping a torn shirt around her husband's bleeding head.
"Sarah! Look at me!" Sharon barked, keeping her voice low but clapping her hands once to break the nurse's shock. "I need you focused! You and her—" Sharon pointed at the mother in the sweatpants. "—start triaging the wounded! Check for concussions, splint any broken bones with magazines and tape! Do not let anyone go to sleep if they hit their head!"
The mother gave a sharp, definitive nod, immediately pulling the nurse by the arm. "Come on, honey, let's go."
Sharon dropped back down to her knees.
Kimmie was absolutely losing her mind.
The concussive blast had triggered a massive, rolling contraction that tore through her body with the force of a freight train. The twenty-three-year-old girl was thrashing on the linoleum in a slick, vile puddle of amniotic fluid, urine, and her own feces. Her body was violently evacuating everything as the baby dropped hard into the birth canal. She rolled onto her side, gagging, and projectile vomited thin, yellow bile across the tiles.
"Give me some fucking drugs!" Kimmie shrieked, her voice tearing at her vocal cords, completely ignoring Daniels's order to stay quiet. Her spine arched off the floor as another wave of sheer agony ripped through her uterus. "Make it stop! Give me the fucking drugs!"
"Kimmie, look at me," Sharon ordered, grabbing Kimmie's face, ignoring the vomit and sweat. "You are fully dilated. It is too late for medication. You are going to have to do this natural."
"No!" Kimmie sobbed, her fingernails clawing frantically at the floor. "Get it out of me! I don't want it! Take it out! It wasn't supposed to hurt like this!"
"Breathe!"
"Renee!" Kimmie wailed blindly, her head rolling back, her mind entirely fracturing under the pain and the trauma. "I want my sister! Renee lives on the Southside! That's where they bombed! They killed her! Call her! Please, God, just call her!"
"I can't call her, Kimmie," Sharon said, her voice dropping into cold, unbreakable steel. "But I am right here. I am going to deliver this baby."
"Where is Troy?!" Kimmie cried, her body seizing again. "Troy!"
Sharon looked over her shoulder.
Troy Barlow wasn't beside his wife. He hadn't shielded her during the blast. When Sharon had pulled Kimmie down, Troy had scrambled away like a frightened rat.
Sharon scanned the dusty, chaotic hallway.
Off in the cut, tucked into a dark, recessed alcove near the nurses' station, a heavy crash cart had been violently overturned by the shockwave. The plastic drawers had shattered, spilling sterile supplies, bandages, and locked medication boxes across the floor. The lockbox on the narcotic drawer had completely cracked open on impact.
Troy was crouched in the deep shadows of the alcove.
He wasn't looking for his laboring wife. He wasn't checking on the safety of his unborn child. His hands were violently shaking as he frantically dug through the spilled medical supplies.
Sharon watched in absolute, cold disgust as the former golf pro found a loose blister pack of heavy-duty Oxycodone. He didn't even bother popping them out one by one. He ripped the foil backing off with his teeth, dumped three pills into his trembling, sweaty palm, and aggressively dry-swallowed them, his eyes rolling back in pure, addicted relief as the chalky pills hit the back of his throat.
The world was literally burning to ash around them. The military was dropping thermobaric bombs on American soil. His wife was throwing up, shitting herself in agony, and begging for a sister she thought was dead, about to give birth to her first child on a filthy hospital floor.
And Troy Barlow was just getting his fix.
Sharon felt a surge of white-hot, visceral hatred for the man, but she ruthlessly shoved it down. She couldn't afford the anger right now.
"Elena!" Sharon yelled, completely ignoring the addict in the corner. She turned to Dr. Reyes, who was stumbling out of the consultation room, clutching her own ribs. "Grab her shoulders! We can't keep her in this hallway. On three, we carry her to Room 402!"
"I don't want it!" Kimmie screamed, her face twisting in pure agony.
"You don't have a choice," Sharon commanded, her voice leaving absolutely zero room for argument. "One. Two. Three!"
They hauled the screaming, terrified girl off the floor, dragging her away from the barricade, the fallout, and the useless junkie hiding in the shadows, moving her straight toward the operating room to bring a new life into a dead world.
Wednesday, December 10, 2025, 9:15 AM
Countdown to Extraction: 65 Hours, 26 Minutes Remaining