The Smell of Burning Human: A Memory That Never Fades

The blast stole my lungs' breath before I knew it hit. The pressure wave slammed into me with the force of a freight train, tearing through the lobby, obliterating marble, steel, flesh—anything dumb enough to be in its path. One second, I was standing there, listening to my contact talk about logistics. The next, I was on my goddamn face, my ears ringing like a siren had been crammed into my skull.

My detail tackled me to the ground, a dead weight crushing me against rough concrete. It wasn’t clean pavement, either—it was littered with glass, splintered wood, bits of someone’s fucking skull for all I knew. My cheek scraped against it, and the taste of blood filled my mouth, thick and metallic. Dust and debris clogged my throat. I coughed, spitting something wet and dark onto the ground, my body screaming at me to move, but my muscles wouldn’t fucking listen.

When I forced my head up, the world around me was an unholy mess. Smoke churned in the air, thick as tar, mixing with the acrid stench of burning flesh. That smell—it sinks into your skin, into your clothes, into your goddamn bones. You can scrub all you want, but it never leaves. A wet sucking sound came from somewhere to my right, and I turned just in time to see a guy trying to hold his own intestines inside his stomach. His hands were slick with blood, shaking as he gasped like a fish on dry land. He wasn’t going to make it. Neither was half the room.

I should’ve stayed down, but instinct took over. My legs wobbled as I pushed myself up, boots slipping in a warm, sticky mess I didn’t want to fucking identify. The lobby—God, the fucking lobby—was painted in blood. Bodies, or what was left of them, were scattered like discarded meat. Limbs here, torsos there. A head sat near the reception desk, half of it caved in, an eyeball dangling from a strip of sinew. My contact? Fuck. He wasn’t just dead—he was everywhere. A smear on the walls, chunks on the ground, splattered across my goddamn vest. My stomach lurched, bile burning the back of my throat.

Training kicked in—secure the area, assess, find the team. But what the fuck were we securing? This place was a charnel house. The fucking Reaper had taken a stroll and decided to redecorate. A hand clamped onto my shoulder—one of my guys, blood-streaked, eyes wide and hollow. He opened his mouth, but I couldn’t hear a damn thing over the high-pitched whine drilling into my skull. I just nodded. We were alive. For now.

Hours passed. Maybe minutes. Time didn’t make sense. The fires burned low, smoke curling toward the ruined ceiling. They were still pulling bodies out of the wreckage—some whole, most in pieces. Survivors shuffled through the carnage like ghosts, their faces blank, their clothes soaked in someone else’s blood.

I walked out of that lobby, but part of me never left. In the dead of night, when the world is quiet, I’m back there—back in the smoke, the blood, the silence after the screaming stops. And no matter how far I run, I can still smell the burning.