Darby Rowles took third place in the years 7/8/9 story category of the Wangaratta Young Writers Award with this piece. The competition is run annually by the Rotary Club of Appin Park Wangaratta and the Rotary Club of Wangaratta, and is supported by the Wangaratta Library.

The pain was unbearable. It felt as if a thousand nails were scraping away at his skin, leaving horrible gashes that appeared in his flesh. Blood gurgled from the wounds, an unnatural shade of crimson slowly changing to a putrid black. The foul ash that filled the air mixed with the small amount of snow that fell from the sky creating an unnatural blizzard, whipping at his face and wounds. If only death would take him from this nightmare. The pain was unbearable.

24 hours earlier (one hour before meltdown)

The job they had given him was a pathetic waste of his talent. They had him delivering coffees to the ‘Executives’, a group of old men bickering over nonsense. He had a Master of Science in Nuclear Engineering, yet he was stuck as some lackey for uneducated fools. It had always been his dream to work at the Chernobyl plant and now it had been tarnished by being something only just above a lowly servant. He had had to move his wife and newborn son here, far from any relatives for what seemed to be the perfect job and hopefully the perfect life. Now he could only run through in his head, what he was to tell his wife, about how unfairly he had been treated.

Deciding to take a break from his tedious coffee deliveries, the man began to wander the plant. What had been advertised as the ‘Next Generation’ power plant was a derelict place, cupboards festered with black mould, ceilings were damp and rotting from years of water damage and, worst of all, the reactors were pitiful excuses of machinery from who knows what decade. The man sighed as he observed the reactors from the vast window that overlooked them. Laying back in the cheap office chairs that littered the viewing room, he noticed it. A crack. In the window. It began spreading out across the window, creating a mesmerising pattern as it spiderwebbed through the safety glass. There was a slow, dying groan from the generator, building into an ear splitting shriek as the machinery halted to a stop. A blinding light erupted from the reactor, and then, darkness.

The sun had started to dip towards the west as the strong winds finally let the dust settle, revealing the horrific scene. Half the power plant had been decimated, only the small amount of rubble proved that it had once stood there. The other half of the building had fared slightly better, yet within its broken walls lay many poor souls, their mangled corpses staining the tattered carpet a sick shade of scarlet. The man groaned as he tried to lift himself up from the debris surrounding him, but an office desk pinned him down to the cold, damp ground. The office desk had somehow shielded him enough from the split-second explosion that he hadn't died, yet his whole body still felt as though he had been slammed against a wall - perhaps he had been. Using the last remaining drop of his strength, he managed to push the splintered desk off of himself, relieving his chest of its weight. Standing up, the man began to take in his surroundings and wept. It was a scene that he would never forget, a scene of utmost destruction and death, a scene that changed him.

Panic coursed through his body as he realised that he had no idea where his family was. They were going to come into his work today, but they hadn’t arrived before the explosion went off, there was a minute chance they were okay and that was enough to keep him going. Scrambling across the messy piles of concrete and steel, he made his way to the only half of the building that still stood and carefully made his way up the rubble to the entrance. The first thing his eyes laid upon was a body, torn in half each side laying on either side of the room. The wounds where the limbs had been torn apart had been gruesomely cauterised by the explosion, leaving horrific burnt and bubbling skin. The man's stomach convulsed as the vomit rose up his throat, a foul, retching sound came from his mouth as the putrid mixture covered the already grotty carpet.

Regaining his composure, the man carefully stepped around the foul pool of vomit and made his way out of the gruesome scene. Horrific thoughts of what lay ahead flooded his mind, dread seeping into his heart seizing it and taking hold. His breathing became shallow as he stumbled down the ravaged hallway. His grim thoughts became reality as he ran past another of his colleagues, their body pinned through the neck to the water cooler by a steel beam. Blood mixed with the water from the cooler as it flowed down from the wound, the skin peeled back from rubbing against the cold steel. The man tore his eyes from the sight and continued on, his mind only focused on escaping this dump with some supplies and finding his precious family.

With regained strength, the man bolted down the corridor, focused only on his goal and headed for the cafeteria. Arriving before the cracked door, he hesitantly slid it open, pieces of it falling to the already dusty floor. Fear. A simple emotion. The only one he felt as that door creaked as it slid open. Trembling, the man tried to turn and run, but it felt as though he was frozen in place, he could only stare. A horde of foul creatures were tearing each other apart, blood creating disturbing art upon the walls. With horrible realisation, the man understood what these things were, they were the very people he had worked side by side with. His colleagues turned to look at the man, sick grins spreading across their mutilated faces. Slowly, he began to step back but this was enough of an invitation for the creatures and they followed in his wake. Sprinting back down the corridor, the man could hear the heavy, sinister breathing of the brutes close behind him.

Just as he turned the corner and saw the beautiful daylight streaming through the collapsed walls, he felt a hand grip his shoulder, the bony fingers digging deep into his flesh. Pain coursed through his body as he fell out of the broken building, the creature still holding tight onto his body. Tumbling down the harsh rubble, the man tried kicking out at the creature exerting all of his strength to be free from its torment, yet it held on. Landing on the hard ground below them, the man let out a gasp as the breath rushed out of him leaving him weak. Hungrily, the disgusting creature brought down its mouth to the man's body, ready to feed on the succulent flesh. 'I will not die here,’ the man screamed in his mind, and with renewed energy gripped the creature's head, forcing his thumbs into its blood-shot eyes. With one push of his thumbs, its eyes ruptured, a foul mixture of its body’s juices flowing from the wound dripping slowly onto the ground. The man ripped his fingers out of its eye sockets, taking skin and flesh along with them. Its body slumped and eventually fell still, the wounds from its eyes no longer bleeding. Wearily, the man breathed a sigh of relief as he calmly cleaned his hands on his jeans. To think that this foul creature had tried to hurt him, he scoffed at the idea.

Something had changed within him.

Remembering that there were other creatures just like that pathetic thing he had killed, he decided to venture out to the city, to see what else was affected by the explosion. He blundered towards the forest that surrounded the nuclear plant, the trees providing a stark contrast to the ash choked sky and barren ground. Gaining speed, the man darted through the forest, the sky turning a deep black as night fell, the stars mere pin pricks in the endless sea of darkness. His breathing quickened as panic took over, the forest seemed an unending maze. Branches whipped at the man's face as he stumbled through the trees, snow blanketing any sort of path he may have been able to follow. Finally, after what seemed like a lifetime of running, he spotted a singular light off in the distance, scrambling through the bracken and up the snow-touched hill the man saw it, the most beautiful thing he had ever borne witness to. The City.

Excitement flooded his body as he took in his surroundings, but it just as quickly dissipated. Faltering, the realisation dawned on him, the city was in chaos. The light that had seemed a blessing was really just a half-broken street light that was somehow still powered. Defeated, the man eventually sat down - his back against the street light - letting the stress of the events finally take their toll. A moderate but constant throbbing pain emanated from his shoulder, the wound from the creature had become infected. The flesh had become a sickly green and the joint felt as though it was on fire when he tried to move it, but still he had to persevere. Wincing as he slowly stood up, the man began to hobble in the vague direction of his house, his family. Each step ended in excruciating pain but each step brought him closer to his goal. As he journeyed, he passed many horrific scenes, families in houses who had once loved each other had ruthlessly torn each other apart leaving only bloodied remains; no creatures stalked the desolate streets, they had all been ripped to pieces by one another.

He knew he was close. The streets began to have a familiarity about them, in contrast to the unknown roads he had previously wandered through. Eventually, he reached the rusted metal gate that stood firmly outside his home and carefully swung it open. The gate let out an agonised squealing sound as the rusted metal slid against the cracked concrete path. A high-pitched scream got his attention and he rushed inside to find the source. The man paused. A creature stood over his wife and he acted accordingly. He slammed his trembling fist into the creature's stomach and gripped deeply into its skin, the mutated flesh soft to the touch. Nauseating black blood spewed out of the wound, splattering across the man's legs sending a sensation like fire through his bones. Ignoring the awful pain and the foul corpse, he rushed to his wife's side, in her arms their newborn son lay breathing softly. A singular tear ran down his cheek, turning into a messy sobbing fit as the tears kept coming, cleaning his blood-covered cheeks. His wife lay dead on the floor in a pool of her own blood, a chunk of her side was missing, its remnants scattered across the hardwood floor. He had been too late. The man tenderly picked up his son from atop his wife's corpse, there was no chance to save him, without a mother he was as good as dead even more so considering the man's current condition. He gently laid one last kiss upon his child's forehead and shuffled slowly outside to meet his fate.

The wind howled as a snowstorm whipped through the streets, a small streak of moonlight illuminating the man who had laid himself down to die.

The man's body lay rigid against the cold asphalt street, snow now almost covering every inch of the place, mixing with the foul ash in the sky. He felt his body changing, as though the very fibres of his being were being painfully rearranged. The black blood that covered his legs was now not only that creature but his own. His beautiful crimson blood was changing to the putrid black as it seeped from the wounds he had inflicted on his body. The pain was unbearable. Death was to be his saviour.