‘Kill Everything That Moves’ Part 13

The hospital's ruins offered no sanctuary...

Nis 6, 2025

THE HARVEST
The hospital ruins swallowed our screams.

We’d found a survivor—a nurse pinned under rubble, her legs crushed. As we lifted the last concrete slab, her grateful smile froze. A shadow passed over us.

“Rain!” Avva shrieked.

The Eluzacid fell in fat, glistening globs. We dove for cover, but not everyone made it.

I’ll never forget the sounds:

The hiss as droplets touched skin.

The wet crunch of bones dissolving.

And worst of all—the silence after.

Because the dead didn’t stay dead.

Their remains—a fine, metallic dust—floated upward, sucked into the roiling clouds like reverse snowfall.

“They’re recycling us,” Ocean whispered, horrified.

THE RETREAT
John’s voice crackled through the radio: “Fall back now!”

We ran, dragging the nurse between us. Behind us, the hospital twitched. Walls bulged outward as if something massive pressed against them from within.

Then—the laugh.

The same childlike giggle we’d heard in Newlife’s vents.

Randy turned, shock rod raised. “What the hell was—”

“Don’t look!” I yanked him toward the helicopter. “Just run!”

THE AFTERMATH
In the chopper, the nurse convulsed. Black veins spiderwebbed from her wounds. John didn’t hesitate—he injected her with something from his vest.

“Sedative,” he lied. But I saw the label: “QUARANTINE PROTOCOL 9”.

Avva clutched my arm as Manhattan shrank below us. “They’re not just killing us,” she realized. “They’re using us. For what?”

I had no answer. Only a growing certainty:

We were never meant to win.

We were meant to feed something.