Four days earlier, he was sitting in the mess hall with nine of his teammates, chatting over plates of pasta that he had cooked himself. They’d heard the faint scratching and scraping noise first. Then came the terrible high-pitched shrieks that made him want to cup his ears. A brilliant blue glow followed moments later as dozens of the spider like creatures emerged from the ceiling.

He’d escaped into a sanitation sewage line, covered in hog manure and the blood of his friends. At first, he’d hesitated and turned to go back, but what he saw from inside that tunnel had terrified him—the spiders were spinning his screaming colleagues into orbs. He crawled away like a coward minutes moments later, tears streaming down his filthy face.

He shook the thoughts away and continued walking, his eyes darting back and forth as he scanned the landscape for signs of the monsters. Squinting, he focused on a dust covered road sign in the distance. He was lost now and had been for several days.

His plan was simple. Head west toward the ocean. The Biosphere had been located in an abandoned missile silo on the outskirts of Edwards Air Force base in California. Alex, a Maryland native, had little knowledge of the local geography and could only guess that he was now somewhere northwest of the base. After escaping the attack, he had headed as far away from Edwards as possible. He didn’t need a military background to know the Organics were probably swarming there. After four days of traveling he knew he had to be close to the ocean. Maybe he’d get to see the Pacific before he died after all…if it was still there.

An abrupt and powerful gust of wind knocked him into a boulder, his armor meeting the rock with a crunch. As he pushed himself off the dirt, he caught a glimpse of something on the horizon. The sky to the west seemed different. There was a blue wall reaching up into the clouds. It couldn’t be. Could it?

It looked a lot like rain.

Shielding his visor from the sun, he squinted into the distance.

Another gust of wind tore into his side, knocking him to both knees.

He grunted, pain racing through his body. He was burning up inside his suit, and the inside of his helmet felt like a furnace. Sweat strung his eyes. He winced, waiting for the burning to subside. For a former collegiate athlete, he wasn’t in the best of shape, but at least his damn knee wasn’t acting up.

As his vision cleared, he saw something odd about the rain. It was traveling up into the sky.

Were his eyes playing tricks on him? Or was his body finally succumbing to dehydration?