The Unwelcome Dawn

Chapter Two

The convoy finally reached the safe zone just as night was beginning to fall. The facility was hidden deep in the mountains, nestled between towering cliffs and thick forests. It was an old military bunker, built during the Cold War and repurposed in the years since for disaster relief and emergency situations. Now, it was a refuge—a last bastion of hope in a world that had gone mad.

Alice and Ben were led inside, their belongings searched, their names added to a growing list of refugees. The facility was crowded, full of people from all over the region, many of them injured, all of them scared. The air was thick with tension, the walls buzzing with whispered conversations and the hum of machinery.

Ben was taken to the medical ward, where the doctors assured Alice they would do everything they could for his leg. Alice wanted to stay with him, but the staff urged her to get some rest, promising to update her as soon as they had news.

Exhausted and numb, Alice wandered through the maze of corridors until she found an empty bunk room. She collapsed onto one of the beds, her body heavy with fatigue, but sleep wouldn't come. Her mind was too full of questions, of fears. What were these creatures? Where had they come from? And why—why had they appeared now, in her lifetime, in her world?

Hours passed, and still she lay awake, staring at the ceiling. The soft murmur of voices outside her room faded in and out, and somewhere in the distance, she could hear the faint rumble of equipment, generators keeping the facility running.

She thought about her life before all of this—the mundane struggles, the small victories. It seemed so far away now, like another world entirely. Everything she had known, everything she had taken for granted, was gone.

Her thoughts were interrupted by a soft knock at the door.

"Alice?"

She sat up, startled, and saw a man standing in the doorway. He was tall, with close-cropped hair and a military uniform, his expression serious but not unkind.

"I'm Major Carter," he said, stepping into the room. "I'm overseeing operations here. We need to talk."

Alice's heart skipped a beat. "Is Ben okay?"

"He's stable," Major Carter assured her. "The doctors are doing everything they can. He's in good hands."

Alice let out a breath she hadn't realized she was holding, relief washing over her in waves. But the tension in Major Carter's voice told her this wasn't just a check-in on Ben's condition. Something else was happening. Something bigger.

"We need your help," Carter said, stepping farther into the room. His tone was calm, but there was an urgency underlying his words. "There's a lot we still don't understand about what's going on, and the situation is worse than we anticipated."

Alice blinked, confused. "Me? What can I do?"

Carter's eyes met hers, intense but measured. "You've seen them up close. Survived when many didn't. You have information we need—details, impressions, anything you can recall about the creatures."

Alice hesitated. The memory of those massive, grotesque beings was still too fresh, still too horrifying. But the look in Carter's eyes told her that she didn't have a choice. He needed her, and the world needed answers.

"Okay," she said, sitting up straighter, trying to push the fear down. "I'll tell you everything I remember."

Carter gave her a brief nod and pulled out a small device from his pocket. It was a recorder, standard issue, the kind used for debriefings. He set it on the table beside her bed and clicked it on.

"Start from the beginning," he said, his voice steady, though his eyes betrayed a kind of weariness Alice hadn't noticed before. "From the moment you first saw them."