Day 1,808

It was nearly impossible to tell what was alive and what was dead. Staying still was a risk nobody wanted to take and one that meant something was likely to grab at your legs, pulling you into the chaos that lurked inches below the remnants of molten metal and melted bodies.

The Powers That Be stopped playing at war and let hell rain down, leaving the world a lot quieter, a lot smaller and leaving the surviving few to tiptoe across it all so as not to disturb the broken, undying people who were close enough to burn but far away enough to survive.

It was hard to say what they wanted, their vocal chords were as warped and distorted as their bodies as the ground as the world itself for the most part. They used to huddle together, trying to recuperate but mostly just dying in each other's arms.

Now they hide, they blend in with broken wires and bodies of those who were to weak to carry on and they wait for other survivors like trapdoor spiders, clawing at anything that triggers their alarms and stripping it to bare bones within minutes.

On the surface the world was dead but those scant few inches below were teeming with a whole new culture.