“Hey, do you smell something...uh, unusual? I mean...like a putrid smell?”

     I turned and raised my head to the direction Tracy was referring to, took a deep breath, trying to figure out what that smell was. Halfway through inhaling, I could feel a sickly sour stench coming towards me with the wind.

     “Yeah, I do. Another body, probably.” I looked around; there was no evidence that anyone had been here in a long time: giant rocks embedded in the earth, various unknown trees growing into the sky. Everything was usual, except the smell. That was the first time that I learned something about fear of death.

     No one could ever imagine what I had experienced in that no-man’s land in Cambodia. Actually, I didn’t even know where I was until the news came out. Fortunately, I was not the only human being who found themselves there after one night. Long story short, this incident could be traced back to spring, 2014, two years after the “End of the world”. But to me, it was like the end of my world.

     I slowly opened my eyes that morning. My back hurt a lot. Every time I tried to turn over, the crack sound made by my spine woke me up. Such a horrible bed, I thought. A beam of light shot straight into my eyes like a spotlight. I was forced to close my eyes immediately and started shouting to my mom, “Mom! Told you to shut the blinds many times! Now I am almost blind as you wish!” The pain made me even testy.

      “Mom! Are you listening?” I shouted to her again as I squeezed my eyelids together to form a thick shelter for my eyes. The ability to see through my eyelids impressed me again. “Mom?”...No one answered. I pushed myself up, turned my head to the shade. “Wait, where am I?” I glanced around, all I could see was in green. “Christine! I am so glad that you’re still alive!” I stood up before I could see anyone. The first thing that came to my eyes was a huge mess. Meters-tall trees that were broken in half stacked together, exploding their gigantic roots in the air. Their leaves were so fresh and green that I concluded they did not die naturally. In several miles, almost everything was flattened completely. Then some gray-white metal debris jumped into my sight; a larger charred debris still had characters on it: A, R, LI, E. Oh, AIRLINE. Things that happened last night flashed back suddenly. I was supposed to take Malaysia Airline MH 371 home. I still remembered having that disappointing airplane dinner. Then right after the stewardess took my plate way, I started to feel weightless; after that, all I could hear was screaming, then I was here.

       “Christine! Are you okay?” I was dragged back to the reality. I quickly checked myself, several drops of blood on my shirt and jeans, some cuts, but after all, I was fine.

       “Not a big deal.” I smiled. “Can’t believe we can survive. Thanks to these trees! By the way, anyone survived, Tracy?”

        Tracy, my high school classmate, was my partner on an exploration trip to Malaysia. “ Yeah, but not many. Let’s check around again.”

        We walked towards the debris. Some large pieces were halfway stuck into the soil. The air in a primeval forest should be pretty clear and fresh, but there, the odor of gasoline permeated the air. “Do you think we should leave? The smell of gasoline is too strong. What if it explodes?” Tracy asked, covering her nose with both hands.

       I thought for a while, “Maybe. But the further we go from the site, the less possible for people to find us! They always look for the site first.” After an all-around consideration, we decided to go into this unknown jungle to find a way out of here and escape from this time bomb.

      The jungle was deep and dark. Every direction looked the same to me. Without navigation, we soon got lost. As we walked further, the visible bodies got less. But still, in such a quiet place, a place that you could even hear your breath, the expected existence of bodies could still shock us.

       Two days passed, and we still couldn’t find our way. The sense of starving, fear, and tiredness blended together, growing stronger. When the sun shone on this land again, we started foraging. Suddenly, a cluster of the green half a mile from us quivered, then there came the sound of footfalls rustling the fallen leaves. We rushed towards it quickly and tried not to terrify whatever it was. A few steps from him, a 6.5 feet brown man with camouflage paintings on his face stood up, staring at us with his eyes that were as blue as the ocean. His costume made of animal fur was not thick enough to hide his muscle that was even more well built than those gym people. Seemed like he just hunted game, the blood went all the way down from the tip of the spear to his elbow. Until a larger drop of blood was accumulated, it dropped. 

      “Hey, English?” I tried to communicate. Before I could finish my word, a sense of self-defense raised from both his eyes and body language, holding the spear with both hands, waving back and forth while pointing towards us. We were too afraid to talk to him again because my instinct told me it would do no good. He looked at us from head to toe and soon shouted to the jungle in the language that we couldn’t identify. In an instant, around ten men his size rushed out from our back. One of them punched me on my cervical vertebra.

      They laid me down on a tree stump, and my field of vision shrank and shrank, a symptom of unconsciousness. Through the tunnel vision, a beam of sunlight shot directly to my eyelash, so bright, so warm. The last sunshine in my life?