Colonel Elsie Digwell woke up wearing the same clothes from the night before in an unfamiliar room. This was a common enough occurrence- she was doing her part to try and save the country.
She leaps from the bed and takes inventory of her keys, wallet, and her boots. The man she slept with snores on beside her, an egregious amount of back hair bushing out beneath the blankets. She shudders at the sight and slips on her shoes. She hopes the back hair isn’t genetic.
Excusing herself through the front door and down to the cordoned-off street level, she ducks her head against the wind. This was the 37th night in a row, but nothing had changed. Her breasts weren’t tender, the nausea was non-existent, and she had more energy than a toddler hopped up on a full bag of cotton candy. Not that there were any toddlers around anymore.
She slips against the wet walkway on her way into her own dilapidated apartment, if one could call it that. Once the plan was in action, she had no need for a real place to call home. She wouldn’t be spending her nights anywhere but in a revolving door of men’s beds.
What she does need access to that was all her own is a shower. Stripping off her clothes before the studio door is even shut behind her, she steps into the stall and doesn’t flinch as the cold water sluices over her.
It warms up gradually, but Elsie barely feels it. She knows in her bones that she has failed. The Holocene they called it. And every day, the level dropped until the minimum viable population was past the point of saving.
Her unit, made up of over 4,000 female volunteers, had been dispersed across the country as a last hope.
Her watch buzzed on her arm and she turned off the water to listen. Every morning, the town siren goes off at exactly 9:17 a.m.—except today, when it stops halfway through. That’s when she knows that it’s too late. The siren is no longer a warning; it’s the final countdown.
Selina Marcille 
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