The beginning

My name is Marie Černá and today I am 17 years old, but a few years ago I almost didn't even know what actually happened during my 10th birthday, which was originally my only memory after I woke up from a coma in a room I didn't know, at a time when nobody knew me.

Towards the end of the first quarter of the 21st century, the Earth faced a swarm of comets, which caused a catastrophe in Western and Central Europe with their impact. Important European cities were in some cases was literally swept off the surface of the earth, the rest of the vast territories were destroyed by pressure waves after the impacts and contaminated by radiation from the destroyed nuclear power plants. In the years 2020 to 2024, impacts of smaller meteorites in open spaces on fields or hills were recorded across Europe, exceptionally one fell in populated areas, but the worst came in the following years when the country collided with much larger meteorites that caused the death or serious injury of millions people.

At that time I was just 10 years old and without knowing it, it was going to be the last summer with everyone I liked, on my birthday we wanted to go to a restaurant for lunch, to the merry-go-round and then to one more place that I already forgot, unfortunately it was the last day I saw my parents alive. When I stopped in front of our favorite restaurant in the town park to tie my shoelace while my parents went inside, everything changed in a few seconds, something that no one in our town expected, because whenever there was any news about meteorite impacts it was outside our area and always only small fragments. But this one was different, a meteorite bigger than all the others hit our park and the pressure wave swept everything away. A hard impact on the wall of the nearby pavilion took my breath away. When I raised my head for the last time, what I saw was a crater a few meters ahead, a huge hole in a row of houses where the restaurant used to be...

***

When I came to, I found out that I was lying in some unknown room in something that resembled an angel** and there were around 12 other children in similar clothes on the beds. I looked at my hands and found that on my left wrist I had a white bracelet with a number and date, to my right hand I had a tube and some cable connected to a small screen on a stand next to the bed, I realized that it was a hospital.
I tried to sit up but I couldn't, I lacked strength in my hands so I stayed lying down, two girls of a similar age to me were lying next to me and I noticed that one of them had been looking at me for a while, I raised my head a bit and found out that there are only girls around and they all started looking towards me even though I didn't know why, I found out after a while.
A woman in a white dress and a cap entered the room and several girls near the door started pointing in the direction of the bed on which I was lying, which this woman noticed and started towards me, when she came closer I noticed that she was a religious sisters. She smiled at me, looked at the screen and pressed a button on the side of the bed, after a few minutes another woman came in white clothes but a little younger and her clothes were different.
"Hello, how are you?" She asked me and started to copy something from the screen, "Ok, but where am I?" I asked and looked around the room again, "You are in the hospital at the Sisters of Mercy of St. Clare" she answered me and started to talk about something with the religious sisters who came before. I didn't quite understand it and I didn't know where my parents were, so I asked again: "Are my parents here somewhere?", they both looked at me and the religious sisters said to me: "Most of the girls here don't have their parents anymore, the ones with could be traced were only records of deaths during that catastrophe that forever changed the shape of the Europe our grandparents knew".
 I looked at them and at first I didn't understand why they were talking about grandparents, but after a while they told me when they noticed that I was looking at them and didn't understand what they were saying.
"I am Dr. Emily Hadley and together with the Sisters of Mercy we take care of children, mainly injured girls who managed to be rescued from the places hit by the meteorite swarm and transported to evacuation centers from which they got to underground shelters where they were put into artificial sleep for safety to survive the worst what was happening on the surface and before the danger and radiation drops to a safe level" the doctor began to explain, "you and the other 12 girls who are here with you in this room were brought from the shelter that was found a year and a half ago when in the place on former border of one of the regions of the Czech Republic, where construction works were started."
"When the radiation in most of central Europe fell to a safe level, the underground shelters began to be opened, unfortunately some were found damaged by the impact of other meteorites and the rescue of most of the people inside was impossible. The shelter you were in was the last one that remained intact, but it was originally considered destroyed because its surroundings were literally razed to the ground and none of the entrances could be found."

I slowly began to understand, but when she talked about the radiation, I looked at her and asked what year it actually was, "it's 2135, the last day of August," she answered. Reality hit me with full force and I realized that none of those I knew was here for a long time, I buried my face in the pillow and tried to fall asleep again.The next day, I learned that when we were taken out of artificial sleep and taken to the hospital in the former monastery on the outskirts of the former capital of Moravia, I was among the last ones alive and I slept here in the hospital for another 9 months.
After a few days, when I was able to stand up on my own and walk with support, Emi, as all the children here called the doctor, tried to find, based on my name and the surnames I remembered, if there were any relatives living and what happened to my parents, but she didn't find anyone and my parents according to the records died a few days after my birthday. They were among the few people that the rescuers were able to pull out alive from the ruins of the collapsed houses, because they were in the back of the restaurant, the front part collapsed immediately.

(angel** – local unofficial name of the hospital clothing with an open back worn by patients.)