Raul Carl's phone camera, high definition though it was, couldn't correct his shaking. As it panned across four rounded, joined indentations in asphalt and cement - and what looked like smoking scrap metal - the signal stuttered haphazardly. Details across Instagram Live, in scattered pixels and colors, only barely got across the imposing scope of the crater, with cleanly rounded edges.

"So we're here from - Fairview... fucking Fairview, not New York or -" a stray scream overpowered his voice, followed by metallic, rusty creaks and crunches. "You can't see it, but the stench - smells like fucking death here... Death and, and acid..." He swallowed. "Only on the Carlstrea- hah..."

As he peeked over the screen, trying to show enough of his panting face against the melting signs overhead, a flurry of attacks flashed out:

"Get your face out"

"DUDE"

"Don't namedrop your shit stream, people are DYING idort"

"Show them."

After rubbing his forehead, he turned the camera back to the fuming streets. The roads became uneven, desolate - flames and piles where buildings once lay. "Viewers. I have to keep them informed... it's what they're here for - all the millions, a record count..."

Falling debris, scattering like shrapnel, interrupted Raul’s monologue, and tossed him on his stomach. The roads tasted salty. He crawled, reaching for his phone, which stumbled away from his fingers after a minor tremor. The lens picked up what were either storm clouds, or smoke spires - followed by discolored flares that murdered the broadcast's video quality.

"CLOSER"

"get in there dickturd"

"What's going on there?"

"fake"

Panoramas of wasted, falling red skies shifted to the underside of Raul's fingerprint, then a close-up of a jet's wing sinking into the earth in chunks. It was only a fragment, with more having fallen elsewhere - yet Raul was but a fraction of its size. Blurred, bubbling shapes cleared – the markings and dimensions more clearly displaying, for astute viewers, that it fell off a passenger plane, with nary a trace of those passengers. Chunks of the serial number descended, melting into a puddle of iridescent, pungent liquid. The man's green, hand-covered face reflected in its swirling depths, while he stepped away.

"Chemicals... From above - Motherfuckers." He'd said that word enough times that it lost all its weight in the vast enormity of the situation - to his disappointment, coming across as defeated more than resolute. He held a hand over the charred remains - instantly jerking it away, and waving to cool it down. It left an acrid musk no matter how much he swung it.

A slow drip filled the silence - which he jolted to. From bisected buildings, a corrosive mix cascaded down. Its biting bitterness charred his nose hairs, sharp and oppressive, not unlike vinegar. Multiple stories, some stretching up to 200 feet, toppled and sunk onto each other, leaving them tilted like arches. Some of the messy, foul-smelling mass seared through windows, as others pooled into similar puddles of liquefied, charred matter - carrying the remains of license plates and tires.

Gradually, steadily, he walked to the escape route. Running could overwork his already tired lungs, and breathing the intensifying miasma of astringent smells was probably unhealthy. An abandoned car crossed his path - maybe still functional.

"There's no pattern to where they hit - there's gotta be ten of 'em going around..."

He looked in his hands to the flowing strings of intersecting comments.

"Go in."

"My sister's there, check in with her"

"CNN says it's just 1 but idk"

"I'm leaving"

"SHOW HER"

Raul shook his head. To deny the viewers their content - no, content was a dirty word. He would be denying them accurate information. Nobody would watch a stream of his getaway. He had to get footage of... that invader.

So he followed the trail of droplets – covering his nose in defense from the aroma of several gyms piling atop each other with each step – filming deeper indents and treading through soft, muddy roadway. "These holes have to be at least... I don't have a fucking ruler to say how big they are, but it's huge... Huge as - hah?"

A choke took him off-guard. Someone else. Someone's body, half hidden by the crater and fog of dissolving steam, clutching to the side. Raul went over seven different conversation-starting phrases while rushing over, before finally reaching down, settling on: "Buddy, what's going on?"

Instagram showed his lower abdomen - or lack thereof. Entrails poured from it into the crevice's rising, steaming mists. The host instantly pulled back, slamming the air. "This is... what-who--fuck... baaaalls, I'm gonna get TOS'd for this!"

Though dragging himself away from the scene, trying to catch his breath, he kept staring back at the train wreck – or wreckage of whatever was once there. Similarly to the impact zone he'd first filmed, and the ones leading up, there were four elongated, round marks of increasing size, with the "survivor" lodged in the smallest. They jutted out from a deeper hole, that was formed of two or three meaty, uneven ovals joined together, scrunched and balled up. Spots between each hole were laced with debris, ground beyond recognition past some girders or bricks; each laced with a generous helping of the same viscous mass that ate away at everything. The cheesy musk was strongest here, stinging his eyes. That wasted, putrid mass, biological and mechanical, littered a small stretch of about 20 feet from the hole, as if it had rained down from a canopy above... or an arch. It stopped at a bigger circle, a full, circular mass that left a small cliff. Settled at its base steamed a warm pool, eating down to the core of the street; and surrounding it, organic ripples.

Webs of fleshy wrinkles in a muddy footprint.

Traces with an identical shape marched into the distance, following a pattern; those behind having less matter dissolving, those ahead having more steaming debris... Chunkier, longer, and with greater proportional weight than human steps. Each 50 feet long, one end to another.

A pound. A muted swallow. A whisper. "They're... fresh prints."

Ignoring the streaming odors, ignoring any breathing concerns, he made a full 180 turn and sprinted. As his arms pumped, a shot of the victim reaching out behind alternated with his destination - the car. He ignored the weak murmuring behind him, but some words caught on in the chat:

"COWARD"

"What did he say?"

"Prince?"

"Footprints"

"It's her footprints and swet"

"It's the ground zero of bioweapons is what it is"

Finally planting his face at the Toyota's wheel, Raul found the key right in the ignition. And a second later, he found out why it had been abandoned. The highway, every path, was blocked by smouldering scraps of roofs and windows, and gargantuan potholes that could swallow city buses.

And the screen shook, distant lights appearing to bounce with the springs suspension.

"NO! No, wrong! That can't - it can't fucking happen here! Now?!"

With the phone now out of his palm, tossed to the passenger seat, viewers saw Raul reaching for the drivers' door. The next shaking tremble sent him and the car rolling asunder - the phone jostling, too, the lens pointed to a cup holder. Sounds of assorted, choked swears and pounds echoed on that shot, as vibrations continued.

Until the seat curled inwards. The frame of the vehicle crunched, bits of support snapping in on each other.

Behind him, the windshield displayed four azure toes. Toes, of all things, fucking toes. They connected to the ball of a foot hanging overhead, with shells of similar cars between the phalanges. The blue digits dragged ditches in the road, gathering smashed, mangled debris in the oozing, alien sweat on her whorled flesh. The same acidic sweat seared holes in the roof, revealing the looming sole was pressing its weight down. Hard, fleshy bits bulged in every new opening. Sweat flooded the pedal area, eating away at the catatonic, immobile legs occupying it. Electronic components twinged at the rapid change in temperature. Twisting motions and buckling audio indicated: the expensive sports car chassis was being curled like a pill bug under a single boulder-like mass, its interior rotating.

The final image broadcast of Raul Carl was a desperate, silent, open-mouthed stare, as the foot broke the windows - or rather, swallowed them. The echoing audio of sizzles, punctuated by wet crunches, continued for three minutes and twenty-seven seconds. The camera caught nothing but loosely shifting red pushed against it. Before, ultimately, a current of the sloshing liquid drowned the recording device with a spark.

SIGNAL LOST