Chapter 8: Doomsday, The end of an era

The sky was painted red, as the cities were burned down to ashes. Bodies can be seen among the rubble. Some buried, some torn down to bones and others like a meat paste.

I had an urge to puke my guts out as the blood and gore made me nauseated. I kept on watching the horrors unfold in front of me. Soon I saw the famous Marine drive in Mumbai, the city of dreams, erased from existence. As fire ran down from the skies, the waves coming from the Arabian sea was dyed red with blood.

In the distance I spotted a child hiding under one of the wreckages of a house. As I walked forward towards the child, a monster that seemed like a hybrid with the body of an ape and skin and facial features of a tiger rush towards the child and held him by his neck.

Crack-

The child's eyes lost its life, and the monster began to chew on the child's head, and soon after completely ate it.

I felt all the hair on my body straightened up as fear began to overcome me, I was rooted to the ground like a tree when I felt the monster's gaze towards my direction. I was afraid I will die, and this time it will be true death.

The monster was just 10 meters away from me, I tried to run away but I was not able to move my body, I felt paralyzed. Soon the monster started walking towards me.

8 meters, 5 meters, 2 meters…

As he was about to reach me, I closed my eyes losing all hope of survival against the beast.

5 seconds, 10 seconds, 15 seconds…

Realizing nothing happened, I opened my eyes to find that the monster walked through me as I didn't exist in this world. Then I remembered it was all a memory.

Calming myself, I walked forward, trying to figure out what is happening, suddenly my eyes fell on a newspaper that was half burnt.

The date of the paper was June 16th, 2035. And in the front page was an article with the headline "Doomsday, The end of an era".

As I read through the article, I understood that it all began in December of 2034, when the west and east waged a war to settle things once and for all. After 5 years of warfare, the east decided to use nukes to demoralize the west, but the west too retaliated with their nukes. As hundreds of nukes were used, the world began to change and evolve due to the high amount of radiation in the atmosphere.

The death toll crossed 7 billion within months, and the remaining people were left to struggle for their own survival. The society we knew off broke down completely, and there was utter pandemonium throughout the world. The US, Japan, Switzerland were some of the countries that fared slightly better than the others.

Countries like India and China two of the most populated countries suffered the worst due to most of its citizens dying from the radiation and with bodies started to pile up and began to rot, new diseases began to spread. This crippled the strength of most of the countries.

Countries like South Korea, Philippines, Indonesia, France and some of the European countries, built shelter around the countries to save guard the remaining food and medical supplies. Each shelter having near 10,000 to 50,000 people depending on the resources available.

The world as I knew off have changed completely. Beasts began to evolve and adapt better than humans. They grew stronger, new hybrid races of monsters came to light and humans' guns and ammunitions were almost insufficient to kill the monsters.

In the utter chaos, the world saw hope when few people came out from the shadows. This people showed remarkable prowess and were able to use Chi to kill monsters. China and Japan being the frontrunner in the powerhouses that were hidden in the shadows.

These martial artists used traditional weapons like spears, swords, katanas, and similar weapons to pierce or slash the monsters' thick skins. Their weapons covered with a coating of Chi were able to kill the monsters, which normal bullets can't even pierce.

Though some of the heavy artillery, armor piercing bullets and missiles were still able to kill one monster, when attacked with a salvo of heavy artillery. Though this method worked initially to fend off the beast waves, but after a few months, most countries were running low on their ammunition of heavy artillery.

After going through the entire article, I got a rough understanding that around 100 million people were accounted throughout the world. There were some stranglers that were hiding in caves or their own bunkers. Some rich business tycoons also planned to shift to Mars or the Moon for a new human settlement. But their plans were curbed when they found out that all the spaceships that they sent outside Earth were destroyed and lost connection.

This left the billionaires to invest heavily on the so-called bunkers for billionaires or commonly called as Elysium. In Elysium, life was much better compared to other normal shelters run by the army, or factions led by stronger individuals.

With the help of superior technology and a lot of money, they had resources to feed 1 million people for 100 years, even if there were no new food produced during this 100 years. But they completely shut off their gates to the common people, only allowing the rich tycoons, elites of the society and geniuses from across the world.

They had their own mercenary group and martial artists protecting them. The current population of Elysium was near 100,000 and it was a futuristic shelter with its walls 100 meters high and 3 meters thick, made of a military grade alloy known as "Strongtium", one of the most expensive and super strong alloys known to humans. Strongtium won't get a dent even if it was struck by a missile directly. With the walls of Elysium made of Strongtium, the shelter was capable of defending against continuous beast waves for a long time.

At the end of the news article, there was a sentence that made my eyebrows twitched. It read

"Did we bring doomsday upon ourselves, or are we just pawns in a chessboard, being played upon to bring the end of an era."