The day was July 3, 2029. The crops in all the neatly procured, subsidized fields lining the highway were starting to pop. Where the fields were healthy, the corn was definitely knee-high, and the soft, bushy rows of soybeans were definitely looking super bright and green. The stretch of roads was quiet, like always, as I raced my black 2008 Ford Focus to my mom’s house. She raised my two older brothers and me on her own since I was barely sixteen. “Come on, Katherine!” I shouted at my with frustration, “Can you drive any faster!” No matter how fast I drove, it didn’t seem fast enough.

When I started my usual shift at my totally normal, not embarrassing, soul-sucking, lifeless job, nothing really convinced me the world was going to end. That something more lifeless than my soul would start rising from the grave. To be honest, I wasn’t sure if I was convinced the world was ending in the middle of my shift at 12 pm, even when the store was practically dead save for my co-workers, who were too busy and distracted by unloading and stocking the truck as I was. I wasn’t sure if the world was ending when I punched.

It was when I was walking to my car that I felt like something was off…

Stepping out of work, I was once again met with a beautiful, bright blue sky, clear and vacant, with no sign of clouds in sight. The sun still hung high in the sky, still kissing the earth with its heat, when my nose was assaulted by the sickly sweet scent of what I could only describe as something dead and decaying hanging in the air, faint but still there, cloying at the roof of my mouth, making my stomach twist and turn. The miserably humid July heat made the smell all the more suffocating. Looking towards town, a black cloud of smoke billowed, carrying the acrid smell of burning flesh that seemed to burn my lungs. It took every bit of willpower in me to hold down the sloshing contents in my stomach as I rushed to my car to escape the horrid, godawful smell. Whatever was going on, something was wrong. Very wrong.

The dead, for as long as I could remember, were buried; there were quiet wakes or visitations for the day to remember them by. A proper funeral where family members saw their loved ones one last time, dressed all nicely and lying peacefully in the casket, before the poor vessel that contained their soul was lowered into the ground to rest. Some bodies were sent to a crematorium where their bodies were incinerated in large, hot ovens, returning their bodies to dust, but never… never had I smelled them burned. Never had I smelled them burned. I might’ve been able to miss certain cues from time to time, but now human instinct was screaming at me loud and clear: nothing good ever came of people burning the dead in the streets, and in broad daylight.

I walked to my car as quickly as I could, practically sprinting with adrenaline and fear, flinging the driver's door open and tossing my black shoulder purse as if possessed by a rabid canine. The last thing I remembered before racing home was a brief glimpse of my sixty-year-old coworker, Brad, stepping out of the building. His face went pale, and he looked older as a look of dread fell upon him before I flipped the keys in the ignition and peeled out of the parking lot.

The tires shrieked as I tore out of the lot, my hands slick on the steering wheel. The radio crackled to life the moment I turned the key, not with music, but with overlapping voices—half-formed sentences, bursts of static, someone breathing too close to the mic. I jabbed at the power button, but the sound lingered a second too long before cutting out, leaving an awful ringing silence behind.

Traffic lights flashed yellow as I sped through town. Stores stood open, doors ajar, as if customers had simply wandered off mid-errand. A delivery truck sat abandoned at an angle across an intersection, its back doors yawning wide. No sirens. No shouting. Just that black smear of smoke rising beyond the rooftops, drifting lazily as though it had nowhere urgent to be.

At a red light—still stubbornly red—I finally stopped. My chest ached from shallow breaths I hadn’t realized I was taking. That’s when I saw them.

People stood on the sidewalks, spaced out and still, their faces turned toward the smoke. Not panicked. Not curious. Just… fixed. One woman held a phone to her ear, unmoving. A man in a suit clutched a briefcase with white-knuckled hands. None of them looked at me when the light changed and I lurched forward again.

I didn’t slow down until I reached my neighborhood. Even then, the sense of safety I’d expected never came. The air here carried the same faint sweetness, thinner but unmistakable, like it had soaked into everything. I pulled into my driveway and sat there with the engine running, watching my front door as if it might open on its own.

Inside, the house felt wrong. Too quiet. The clock in the kitchen had stopped. My phone buzzed at last—dozens of notifications flooding in all at once. Emergency alerts stacked on top of missed calls and messages.

STAY INDOORS. AWAIT FURTHER INSTRUCTIONS.

No explanation. No source.

I called my sister. Straight to voicemail. Then my mother. Nothing. I tried Brad next, against my better judgment. It rang. Once. Twice.

He picked up.

“Brad?” I whispered, even though I was alone.

There was a pause, then his voice, strained and thin. “They told us it was a precaution,” he said. “Just a health thing. Temporary.”

“Told who?” I asked.

Another pause. I heard something in the background—wind, maybe, or fire settling.

“Don’t go outside,” he said suddenly, urgency breaking through. “Whatever you do, don’t—”

The line went dead.

I stood there in my kitchen, phone pressed to my ear, as the first ash began to fall against the window like gray snow. Somewhere in the distance, the smoke thickened, and for the first time, I wondered—not what was burning—but why.