My heart aches, just as my head throbs with pain, not my pain, but the hurt from the sounds of cries and wailing continuing to reach me, I’ve trekked over a mile away from the old city walls and I can still hear the anguish, in the streets where everyone can hear you scream, and smell the bittersweet stench of death from within City of Death. It’s nightmare fuel, it’s been all I’ve heard over the last fortnight, surviving whilst witnessing the devastation plagued upon the people of my city has been soul destroying. I didn’t ask for this, none of us did, if ever the words “war is hell” were true, then this was testament.

Forced to leave in order to retain any semblance of sanity, I’ve abandoned my people, every step away from them is heavy, the gravitational pull of my guilt pulling me back to face the same fate is stronger than my will, but I have to push through, if not for my sake, then for the survival story to be heard, the truth must get out there. Not that it’s made much difference in the last decade, but eventually there will be respite for the survivors of this forever war.

The horrors I witnessed, the explosions, the flashes of light and sensation of heat and with it a washing over of sand, smoke, and debris, and remains of a people. The bodies melting from the inside, watching them disintegrate in a flash, those infected would convulse and collapse in a heap, leaking blood from all their openings. From elders in their 90’s to new borns, the end was the same, a blood boiling, and the complete destruction of their nervous system, sending their body into shock, brain damage, and organ failure. It was nothing anyone could prepare themselves to witness, a sickening act of genocide that most either watched unfold, or were destroyed along with the victims.

I hear the heavy drumming hum of the fleet of bombers overhead, dropping low I duck for cover in a forgotten villages ruins. Nothing but dust, bones, and once treasured trinkets, memories, a peoples most prized possessions, their instruments of survival, and evidently strewn across every foot of this landscape are the instruments of their demise. Shrapnel, bullet casings, burnt, crumbling and unstable infrastructure is what I fear more than their bioweapons.

Only a handful of us are immune, genetics. Or eugenics. They coded the viruses to the bloodlines of a people, I came as a migrant many years ago to take a stand against the occupation and ethnic cleansing, and now I flee in failure, I’ll never make it to the border, but if I can get to the south coast I’ll place my life in the hands of the smugglers, it’s the safest bet I have at living and telling the tale.

There land that wave of bio-nukes. The ground shakes as I shuffle out of the shelter in case the entire ceiling collapses on me, need to find a more secure structure before the jets pass back. The world is a different place in 2035, the dystopia fiction sold us as the reality for across the global south, and yet the rest of the world is occupied by their own internal struggles, the age old ones of power, control, influence, led by avarice, lust and hate. This home seems as stable as it’s going to get for the night, there’s tinned beans and a secure roof. I can’t sleep in the beds, or an any of the three mattresses on the floor, it feels like I’m invading their space enough just stepping into what was once a home, without disrupting their sacred spaces for rest.

As I empty my pack to become my pillow, I still hear the distant cries, I’m so tired as I shut my eyes it almost doesn’t feel real, any other day and this might have felt unreal, but of an actual nightmare, but the concrete floor is a constant reminder this is really happening. I’ve escaped my own demise today, and if I make the night, I’ll be far enough away from the sounds of death, but they will haunt me for the rest of my days, these nights I will never escape.