Caracas, Venezuela, November 2035

  Emmanuel Chavez and I sit outside a bodega, the rain coming down in sheets a few meters away. I lean back in my chair, watching the downpour. Emmanuel, an Austin native with Venezuelan roots and a USMC veteran, comes to Venezuela once a year to visit family.

  He lights a cigarette, taking a long drag before speaking, his voice slow and deliberate.

  "Man, I saw everything in Frankfurt. We were up on this building, cornering one of the main avenues. I had a clear view of two frontlines in the city. Soldiers taking a shit somewhere, thinking no one could see them, junior enlisted guys acting like couriers, riding bicycles behind our lines. Smoke breaks. The guys trying to sneak beers when no one was looking. I caught a few jerking off a couple of times, too. Guys on their phones, talking to family... through the scope of my M40 or binoculars, you could tell when it was a bad call. You just knew."

  He pauses, taking another drag, looking thoughtful. "Not that I blame any of them. We were bored out of our minds, most of the time. The crabs would hit us randomly. Sometimes, we’d go days without anything, then they'd throw everything at us. I saw entire neighborhoods lit up by tracer rounds and flares. It was chaos. But the worst part? The cold, man. Freezing our balls off, even when we were taking shots. Layers of clothes, and still cold. There was me, my spotter Clara, the second sniper team—we’d switch 12-hour shifts—and a TOW and Javelin team."

  He takes another drag from his cigarette, flicks the ash, then continues, his voice low and steady. "About four guys with those. Those guys, man, they always tried to scam shit from us at first or hit on Clara like hungry dogs. We had to keep an eye on everything. We mostly had eyes on Bockenheimer Avenue... my accent probably doesn’t do it justice. But even now, I can redraw it in my head, every detail exactly how it was. Spent weeks staring at that street, lying on my rolling mat, watching through my M40 scope. I had a hole in the wall at ankle height, just for it. Every brick, every shattered window, the facades blown apart, all those bullet holes in the abandoned cars. The burned-out Leopard 2A7, every damn screw on it. And the maggots on that corpse halfway out of the hatch."

  He takes another drag, eyes narrowed as he recalls the memories. “Also, every dead crab... I know more about how they decompose than any biologist by now. It was like a damn chain reaction. You’d shoot one, and a few hours, maybe days later, another lost crab would wander over, trying to figure out what happened. I’d center my scope on its upper thorax. Or if there were more around, I’d aim for where its knee would be.”

  "Why?" I ask, curious.

  He exhales a thick cloud of smoke. “At the beginning of the war, they didn’t give a shit about their own. But later on, you could see some kind of camaraderie. Always the red ones. Even the fresh meat would care if one of their guys got hit. I’d go for what I could—whatever the equivalent of their knee caps were. It was hard to hit, but even just taking out the leg was enough. They’d collapse. You couldn’t hear them from where we were, but after a while, as they fired blindly at us, one of them would get brave and try to drag the injured guy to safety. Two for the price of one.”

  "Saw everything," he continues, his voice steady but cold. "The cruise missiles heading straight for their fuel dumps, the occasional V2 streaking across the sky. Our bombers way up high, watching them drop bombs that would glide down, carpeting entire neighborhoods. You could see it all from up there—the destruction , all the dust being lifted up in the air forming huge clouds that'd take hours to settle. The stray dogs down at street level, feeding on whatever scraps they could find. It was a different world down there, man, like something out of a nightmare. Bodies left behind, burned-out cars, the barking from the stray dogs. Sometimes, when we were facing the wind we'd smell the bodies. We also had someone, don't know who it was but he must have been a marine judging by his music taste. Some stereo blaring music 24/7. Always stopped when the fighting started. Beastie boys mostly, some Johnny Cash here and there. A crab couldn't take a shit without being in the scope of four different marine sniper teams. The French snipers preferred to work on the street level, don't know why. Didn't have time to share cigarettes and unit patches with them."

  I raise an eyebrow, my curiosity piqued. "How is it Frankfurt managed to fall?" I ask.

  He taps the ash off his cigarette. "It wasn’t Frankfurt itself," he corrects, his voice steady. "It was the surroundings. The city itself was a huge booby trap. Every building, every street, rigged to hell. Infantry companies were dug in everywhere, hiding in basements and subway stations, waiting for the crabs to show up. Tanks and IFVs parked in massive hangars or on the ground floor of buildings with their barrels pointed down an avenue and ready to roll out if the crabs gave the grunts too much trouble. And that’s not even counting the snipers and ATGM teams on rooftops. Despite how terrifying those tripods were, there was no getting into Frankfurt. It was locked down tight."

  He pauses, taking a long drag, his eyes distant as he recalls the moment. "But when the defensive lines to the north and south folded like a tent we had no choice but to pull out. Stay, and we’d get trapped, sieged from all sides. That was the only option left. Unit by unit we got out. Less and less men. But more mines and claymores that you could count. No wonder entire neighbourhoods there are still abandoned. We were left behind to cover the rear obviously. Went from shooting one or two crabs a day to twenty. They started figuring out we were leaving, so they jumped on the occasion.

  "Whatchu Want" was still blasting on loop. The bastards had left the stereo running—maybe to fool the crabs into thinking we were still there. The sound bounced off the walls, rattling through the empty streets and echoing all the way up to our rooftop perch.

  The radio crackled as the officer called out platoons, one by one, ordering them to pull out. Overhead, FPV drones buzzed like angry hornets, zipping past before their hum faded into the distance. Then—boom. You'd hear the explosion, and you’d pray it took out enough of them. It never felt like it did.

  I was wound so tight I thought I'd snap, just waiting for our turn to get the hell out. Another team had already taken over, but I lingered on the rooftop, ruck packed, body half-frozen. Just wanted to leave. I must have dozed off—because next thing I knew, Clara was shaking me awake. The sun had dipped low, sky bleeding into night.

  I peeked over the ledge.

  The avenue below was crawling with crabs.

  Hundreds of them, just a hundred feet from the grunts holed up on the ground floor. I don't know how those guys kept their shit together. No one dared to fire—we couldn’t give away our position. But the crabs knew. Smelled us, maybe. Or just sensed something was off. So they seemed to surround us from that side.

  It started with a distant whistle, a sound that sent ice through your veins before you even registered what it was. Then came the impact.

  The first rocket slammed down with a deafening crack—air shattering, concrete bursting apart. But that was just the start. Half a second later, the cluster munitions deployed, spewing out dozens of smaller explosives mid-air. They rained down like metal hail, a chain of overlapping detonations tearing through everything below.

  The street lit up with flashes, each one carving out chunks of asphalt, shattering windows, ripping through bodies—crabs and human alike. The concussive waves hit in pulses, hammering into us even from cover. Dust and smoke swallowed the entire block in a swirling, choking storm.

  You might be reading a pirated copy. Look for the official release to support the author.

  And above it all, "Whatchu Want" kept playing. Over and over.

  Dust swallowed the street below, thick as smoke, churning in the wake of the cluster strike. We couldn’t see shit. Just the flickering glow of fires and the distant echoes of crabs screeching, wounded but not dead. I tried to peer over the ledge, squinting through the haze, but my eyes burned, lungs raw from the filth in the air.

  Then the second strike hit.

  Normal artillery this time—big, dumb, and devastating. The first shell slammed down hard enough to shake my teeth. A split second later, the skyscraper across the avenue took a direct hit.

  The impact bloomed in fire and glass. For a second, the tower stood like it might hold. Then came the groan—a deep, metallic howl as its bones gave out. Floors pancaked, windows burst outward, and in one long, agonizing collapse, the entire structure crumbled in on itself.

  The shockwave rolled across the rooftops, a wave of pressure so strong it punched the air from my lungs. I hit the deck as debris rained down—chunks of concrete, twisted rebar, jagged shards of glass slicing through the wind. The sound was deafening, a mix of grinding steel and the deep, roaring crash of a building becoming nothing but dust and ruin.

  I clawed my way back up, gasping, ears ringing. The street was gone, buried under a mountain of rubble. The crabs too, maybe. Or maybe not. Either way, we weren’t sticking around to find out.

  The radio crackled. Our turn to move.

  Move where? I didn’t know. None of us did. We were dazed, ears ringing, limbs slow to respond. Clara and some grunt I barely knew were huddled near the edge, whispering prayers under their breath—prayers that our building wouldn’t follow the one across the avenue into the dirt.

  The brass on the radio barely acknowledged what just happened. A whole goddamn skyscraper had just come down next to us, and they carried on like it was just another Tuesday.

  “Rooftop team, move. Now.”

  That was it. No mention of how close we’d come to being buried alive. No moment to process the fact that the guys stationed in that tower had only pulled out a few hours earlier.

  The stairwell felt endless. Step after step, boots scuffing against concrete, breath coming in short, ragged bursts. None of us spoke. What was there to say? The building still stood, but the walls trembled with each gust of wind, like it was reconsidering its luck. Dust clung to the air, thick and bitter, grinding against my teeth with every inhale.

  We moved fast at first, legs fueled by leftover adrenaline. Then slower. Then slower still. My knees ached. My hands ran along the rails just to keep balance. The fluorescent lights flickered, some shattered entirely from the shockwaves, leaving whole stretches in darkness. The air was suffocating, carrying the stench of burned wiring, smoke, and something else—something sharp and metallic. Blood, maybe.

  By the time we reached the ground floor, we weren’t running anymore. We were just dragging ourselves forward, one foot in front of the other.

  And then we saw them.

  The guys who had stayed behind.

  They stood near what used to be the entrance, barely visible in the haze of pulverized concrete. Their faces were ghostly, covered in layers of dust and grime, only their eyes cutting through—wide, unblinking. Some coughed, hacking up grey sluddge. Others just stood there, staring at the street. Or what was left of it.

  The road was gone. Buried. Twisted beams and slabs of concrete jutted out where asphalt used to be. Fires flickered under the rubble, casting eerie shadows against the destruction. Wires hung loose from shattered poles, sparking weakly. What had once been a block of city infrastructure, pavement, and steel was now an unrecognizable graveyard of debris.

  A crushed car lay nearby, its roof caved in, tires still smoldering. A dismembered crab twitched beside it, half-buried in rubble, its exoskeleton cracked open like a split shell. More of them lay scattered around—some whole, some in pieces, their alien limbs tangled with the wreckage like grotesque sculptures.

  No one said a word.

  No one had to.

  We were all thinking the same thing: How the fuck are we getting out of here now?

  I shifted my weight, feeling the familiar drag of my pack—easily 60 pounds strapped to my back, pressing down on my shoulders like it wanted to bury me along with the city. My rifle was slung in its bag, strapped to the pack, while my M27 rested heavy in my hands.

  I wasn’t thinking about the next fight. Wasn’t thinking about the brass barking orders over the radio. All I could focus on was the ruined mess ahead of us—the mountains of rubble, twisted steel, shattered glass. We had to climb that. All of that. With this weight. With these lungs still full of dust. With legs already half-dead from the stairwell.

  I took a step forward, boots sinking slightly into the uneven wreckage, and let out a slow breath.

  The first steps were the worst. The ground wasn’t ground anymore—it was broken, unstable, shifting underfoot like a treacherous landslide waiting to happen. Every piece of debris was sharp or jagged or slick with dust. My boots struggled for traction. My knees ached with every climb.

  Clara was just ahead of me, her ruck shifting with each step as she picked her way over the wreckage. The other guys followed in a loose, strung-out line, everyone moving at their own pace, too drained to keep formation. No one spoke. No one had the breath for it.

  Somewhere in the distance, artillry rumbled—farther away now, but close enough to keep us tense. Reminding us that this city wasn’t done tearing itself apart.

  We kept going.

  I hauled myself over a slab of concrete that had once been part of a building’s facade, my fingers digging into the rough surface. My pack threatened to pull me backward. I gritted my teeth, pushing up and over, landing with a hard thud on the other side.

  Ahead, the street sloped upward in a mess of twisted rebar and shattered asphalt. Fires still burned in patches, sending thick plumes of smoke curling into the night sky. Somewhere beneath all of it, there had once been sidewalks, storefronts, maybe a subway entrance. Now it was just a graveyard of steel and stone.

  One of the grunts ahead of me misstepped. His foot caught on a loose chunk of rubble, and he went down hard, his rifle clattering beside him.

  “Shit,” he muttered, pushing himself up. His face was streaked with grime, his eyes hollow. No one laughed. No one even reacted. We were all too far gone for that.

  I adjusted my grip on the M27 and kept moving.

  Step. Breathe. Step. Breathe.

  My thighs burned. My shoulders ached. Every movement felt heavier than the last. The stairwell had taken what little energy I had left, and now the city was demanding more.

  And we still had no idea where the hell we were going. Our platoon sergeant, who picked up the mantle when our lieutenant was killed tried his best to find out where we were but there barely were anything standing, and with the dust in the air we couldn't see past 10 feet.

  "Just go south" he repeated. South we went. Past all the debris, entire time I was on that rooftop I hadn't thought about what it would be like when I had to be back on the street level.

  We marched.

  And marched.

  No one spoke, no one questioned, no one thought past the next step. Just boots against broken pavement, shifting rubble, uneven ground that forced us to move in sluggish, exhausted silence. Every breath tasted like dust and smoke. My pack dragged at my spine, my rifle felt twice as heavy as it should. The city stretched endlessly around us—dark, wounded, gutted by war.

  Then, finally, we reached where we had to be.

  A parking lot.

  Rows of armored vehicles sat idling, engines humming low, their metal hulls painted with soot and streaks of grime. Infantry milled around them, rifles slung, gear strapped down, waiting. The moment they saw us, their stances shifted. No jokes, no complaints about us being late.

  We must’ve looked like hell. Faces caked in layers of dust and dried sweat, uniforms streaked with filth, packs heavier than our bodies could take. They didn’t ask questions.

  Someone wordlessly handed me a water jerrycan. No orders, no formalities—just a simple offer. I barely managed a nod before unscrewing the cap that Clara grabbed it, I dropped my pack and lowered my head before she strated dumping the cold water over my head. The shock of it sent a shiver down my spine, cutting through the exhaustion for just a second.

  Around me, the others did the same. Dirty water pooled at our feet, washing away the worst of the city’s filth but doing nothing for the weight still pressing on our chests.

  We slept like babies in the LAVs and AAVs, packed in tight, crammed shoulder to shoulder like sardines. No room to stretch, barely enough to breathe. Didn’t matter. Sleep hit like a sledgehammer, dragging us under before we even had time to think.

  The rumble of the engines, the occasional jolt from the road—it all faded into the background. The exhaustion was too deep, too absolute. It swallowed us whole.

  But all that shit in the air—dust, smoke, whatever chemicals had been burning—none of it left us clean. Clara started coughing somewhere in the dark, just a dry, hacking sound at first. We didn’t think much of it. None of us felt great. We all had that scratch in our throats, that ache in our lungs.

  But she didn’t stop.

  Days later, even after we were clear of the city, she was still coughing. Deep, wet, racking fits that left her gasping, hunched over like her ribs were cracking apart.

  They flew her out to a French hospital. Told us she’d be fine. Just an infection, some lung irritation, nothing antibiotics wouldn’t fix.

  She didn’t make it.

  We were halfway to the next fight when we got the news.