Silent tears streamed down his face as he stared in disbelief.

'No! This can't be.'

Kale stumbled back and tripped on his feet.

The sharp pain that hit him as he landed on his butt jolted him out of his devastated state.

He got back on his feet.

He stumbled back again in fear and looked at the body once more.

He was hoping that maybe, just maybe, he had just seen someone who had a similar resemblance to his dad, but reality begged to differ.

The jacket that the corpse had on was the same. His dad called it his lucky jacket.

The jean jacket was now torn and covered in dust but Kale couldn't just leave it there. He couldn't.

Reaching for it, he pulled the jacket off the body.

In the process, his dad's eyes opened and faced him with no light whatsoever in them.

Staring at the blank and hollow eyes that looked at him, Kale turned away and emptied his stomach.

He didn't know how long he had been out but it was clear that he hadn't eaten for a while and could only dry heave.

Tears welled up in his eyes as traces of bile burned at his throat.

In the process, he failed to notice the entrance of another person into the morgue.

"My condolences." A smooth voice echoed through the room and grabbed his attention.

A middle-aged man wearing a dull grey suit walked in with slow and certain strides that commanded attention and respect.

His eyes were of a similar shade to his suit.

Kale ignored the man's remark and watched him. The latter walked further into the room and past where Kale was.

He approached a table not too far from where Kale was and pulled off the cloth covering the corpse.

A little girl barely older than six came into view with half of her chest missing. It was like something had taken a huge bite.

"She begged me to take her to work that day." The man started to ramble on.

"I told her my job was boring and that she should stay with her mother." He continued.

Kale doubted that the man was talking to him, at least until he turned to look him in the eye.

"Both she and my wife died because I was too strict." He reached for his suit jacket and pulled out a small object.

It had a long barrel, a trigger, and an aim. It was a gun.

Kale warily took a step back.

He pointed it at his head and let out a low chuckle.

"They were my world and now I've lost them. Even the actual world is now fucked. Don't worry baby, Daddy's coming." Then he pulled the trigger.

The gun let out a loud bang and the man fell to the ground dead.

During the entire thing, Kale couldn't move.

The entirety of the situation and its implications were just starting to dawn on him.

He looked at the wall that was to the man's side.

It was now covered in his blood like a sick mural. This, coupled with the loss of his father, was far too much to stomach within such a short time.

Kale walked backwards until his back met a wall and he slid down until his face was buried in his knees.

Streams of tears gushed out of his eyes as his body trembled uncontrollably.

Some members of staff soon rushed in, having clearly heard the gunshot.

They rushed to the corpse and started calling for the attention of others in the hospital.

During this, Kale couldn't tell what was going on. He was stuck in his own mind to the point where he barely registered when one of the hospital's nurses was calling out to him.

"Are you okay? Were you shot?! The yell was enough to bring him back to reality.

Kale looked at the nurse then at himself.

'Isn't he also human? No, aren't they all human? They must have lost someone too in this mess yet here they are helping others.' Kale nodded to the man's question.

'Just because I lost someone, maybe even my own family doesn't give me an excuse to be worthless. What would my sister say if she saw me like this?' Kale let out a sad chuckle before getting to his feet.

"I'm fine and don't worry, I wasn't shot." He finally replied with words.

His hands wiped the tears from his face. He steeled his resolve and left the morgue and went into the main hospital.

While still searching for the exit, his mind couldn't help but wander.

The staff in this hospital were calm. Too calm.

Kale knew he wasn't as good, heck, nowhere as good as Axel when it came to deductions, but even he could tell something was up.

While he hadn't been there during a crisis, he knew for a fact that hospitals would be far more hectic than this one was especially during what seemed to be the end of the world.

Something was up. Either it was grief that was getting to him and making him imagine things or the hospital, maybe even the military knew far more than what was let on.

"I take it you're looking for an exit?" A familiar voice asked. It belonged to Doctor Stephan.

Kale turned to look the man in the eye. His eyes seemed calm and unreadable. One couldn't tell what schemes he had running through his mind.

"Follow me, I'll take you to where you need to go." Doctor Stephan smiled.

He walked past Kale further down the hall.

Left with no other choice, Kale followed diligently and in silence.

The doctor tried to make small talk during their journey but Kale kept quiet.

He didn't feel safe since his suspicion bloomed and he didn't want to accidentally reveal personal information now that he was suspicious.

Luckily for him, he hadn't particularly been chatty when he woke up save for when he asked about his family and Axel.

The two approached a door that appeared rusty at its hinges and overwhelming dread filled Kale.

"Excuse the sorry state of the doors. This was all we could afford to use as a resting area for those who have recovered." Doctor Stephan explained.

"Now, I'm legally obligated to warn you not to get cut. Tetanus isn't a nice thing." He joked and started walking away.

Kale brought his shaking hands to the double door and pushed it open.

The inside was far larger than he had anticipated as it was roughly the size of the regular high school gym.

The room was filled with easily over a hundred people, if not already at two hundred.

Looking at the state of the people within, Kale knew Axel and he had been lucky.

And while he felt empathy for the people, that wasn't his main focus at that point in time. It was to find Axel and luckily for him, he didn't have to wait long.

After spending a little over four minutes searching meticulously, he saw Axel facing one of the corners in the room.

"Hey, Ax!" Kale called out and the latter whipped his head in shock because he knew that there was only one person who'd call him by that name.

Axel took off and slammed into Kale with a bear hug.

_____

"So you mean to say that in California alone, only about sixty people made it out?!" The statistics shook Kale to his feet.

"I understand the danger, but if we could survive, then why not others?" Kale muttered aloud.

"I'll tell you why? You know that thing we clashed with? It was a baby." The words that left Axel's mouth filled Kale with infernal fear.

"According to those who are comfortable talking about their experience, the ones they faced were nearly two to three times as large as the ones we did." He continued.

"Theirs even had a tail and six arms." Axel sighed. "We were just very lucky."

Kale, on the other hand, didn't hear the last part. Not that he needed to, he already knew.

'That means… the only reason we survived wasn't skill.' His eyes shook slightly.

It wasn't even luck. It was a chance.

"H-how did we survive?" Kale called out to Axel.

"Well, to cut a long story short, when we were at the mercy of the creature, someone shot it through its head." The latter casually revealed.

"Now before you ask, I don't know who or from where." He answered Kale's next question.

Kale looked into the distance and suspicion into the matter only increased.

He looked around and confirmed that the other people were doing something that occupied their attention.

"I think that the military knows mo-" Axel shot forward and covered Kale's mouth before making a 'shush' gesture with his other hand.

"I'm feeling a bit nauseous." Axel suddenly declared and headed to the door before leaving the room.

Kale followed after his friend and ended up in the hospital bathroom.

Axel entered a stall and Kale had no choice but to follow.

"You were about to say that you think the military knows more than it's letting on, weren't you?" Axel raised an eyebrow.

"Well, yeah, but what was with the whole mouth blocking thing?" Kale crossed his arms and leaned against the wall of the stall.

"That was because I had deduced the same on the day we got the alert and I don't exactly like the conclusions I derived." Axel sighed and swiped his face with his hand.

"You make it seem like the alert was a long time ago." Kale chuckled slightly but Axel kept a blank face.

"You've been out for almost a month." Kale went silent.

His knees shook, and he almost lost his balance, but luckily, Axel was there to prevent him from falling.

After ensuring that Kale was able to stand properly, they addressed the issue at hand.

'A month?! I've been out for almost a month?!' Thoughts ran through Kale's mind.

"Kale?!" Axel's voice snapped Kale out of his thoughts.

"Are you okay?"

"Yeah, yeah. I'm fine." Kale reassured his friend.

"I believe that the government already knew that this was going to happen. That's why collection points were already established before and even why the hospital staff seem calm." Axel continued his theory.

"The reason why I stopped you from saying it there and brought you here was because I felt that they could have bugged the room to determine who was saying what." He paused.

"Because if I were the military as a body, I would eliminate any and everyone who knows too much."

After rounding off their discussion, the two left the stall and saw a man entering the bathroom.

He looked at both of them and then at the stall they came out of.

Then back at them and the stall they came from.

An incredulous look filled the man's eyes as he put two and two together.

Axel and Kale, watching this, tried to correct the man, but he wasn't having any of it.

"Not my business." He sighed before entering a different stall.

After the awkward interaction, the two returned to the room and took a corner where they had clear visibility of the entrance while not being particularly in sight to anyone who entered.

A few hours passed before food was brought in and served to the people in the room.

Halfway through their meal was when they entered.

A team of six men wearing military uniforms marched into the room in an orderly fashion.

They formed two rows consisting of three people and formed a passage for the seventh person.

A large man with a clear tan and muscles walked in slowly through the passage.

When he was all the way through, the six people saluted.

"So these are the failures unfortunate enough to survive. Such a disgusting bunch of face-filling, self-serving worthless pricks!" His baritone voice bellowed through the room.

Pin drop silence filled the space.

"A profile has been run on everyone here to determine eligibility." He paused.

"I am here to inform everyone that Martial law has been enacted, and with it, mandatory conscription. From now on, those who are seventeen and above will be taken out of this facility and trained to fight." He walked out as soon as he was done.

It seemed that it wasn't a matter of choice. Not that Axel could blame them as they were facing an invasion unlike any before.

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