Bielefeld, European federation.
My train was delayed, but Zoë Koch had been kind enough to wait for me at the station. At 43, the retired Paramedic looked older beyond her actual years. Her face like most people I've interview was wrinkled and her hair grey. Her body ravaged like most of Central Europe that hasn't been rebuilt yet. After a brief and polite greeting, she invited me to a local restaurant where I had the chance to try authentic Schnitzel and German beer.
"Honestly, it was a miracle that the fallout hadn't claimed as many lives as we initially feared," she began, noticing the burns on my hand. "Radiation sickness accounted for only about 5% of the deaths recorded by the Red Cross that month."
She paused for a moment before continuing. "We suspect that more lives were lost due to delays in patient intake, as we focused on preparations for the bomb rather than immediate care. What helped was that, despite the poor state of the military, soldiers were equipped with CBRN kits. They were prepared for everything—except for the shock waves and EMPs. It took some time, but once the dust settled, the wounded started arriving again."
Zoë took a sip of her drink before elaborating. "My Red Cross team was deployed at the BG Unfallklinik in Frankfurt am Main, on the outskirts of the city. The park and surrounding fields were transformed into a massive field hospital. It span kilometers from the hospital and it’s nearby grave yard to the end of it where the improvised landing area for the helicopters was. Entire kilometers of tents, mobile units, and prefabricated buildings—everyone was there. The Red Cross, the Bundeswehr, Doctors Without Borders, the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies, UNICEF—you name it, they were there. Hell, we even had over a hundred pastors, nuns, and about twenty imams running from tent to tent, offering last rites and helping however they could."
In a cold, calculated manner, Zoë glanced at the message on her phone before turning the screen upside down, choosing not to respond.
"Sorry, it's my son," she said, silencing her phone with a click.
I was stationed at the CAT 1 section, the part responsible for the most critical cases—the wounded soldiers and fighters who arrived near the helicopter LZ. Priority 1 cases. We had run out of body bags, and the field outside was filled with corpses wrapped in garbage bags and plastic tarps. Trucks worked around the clock, hauling them a few kilometers away to a mass grave.
The crabs were about 200 kilometers away in Bavaria, and the nearby field hospitals were being evacuated. No one knew how long the nuclear threat would scare the crabs away, it forced us to move the wounded further away. Amid the moans and shouts of the injured, the constant whir of helicopters landing to drop off casualties was as loud as those. Everything from every European air forces to medical and even civilian helicopters, refitted to carry less critically injured patients, was involved. Brave folks those civilians. One time two of them collided as one approached the LZ and one left it. Thank god there wasn’t any tent nearby and only one of those helicopters were carrying the injured. Took them about two hours to remove the wreckages.
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We had a team of teenagers from a local football club, all in CBRN suits and Red Cross reflective jackets. They moved between the helicopters and the tents, carrying the dead and the wounded. Four or two at a time, they'd lift stretchers and rush them toward the triage area, then sprint back to the next helicopter. These lads worked tirelessly for hours. During the rare moments of calm, they’d collapse onto the grass, exhausted, only to wake up when another helicopter arrived.
Sleep and food were luxuries we couldn't afford. We worked until we dropped, and for some, that meant literally collapsing from exhaustion. We had several heart attacks among the staff, a grim reminder of the toll 20 to 22-hour workdays could take. When the American, Chinese, and African medical teams arrived, it was a relief, but even then, we were still averaging 18-hour days at best.
“What type of injuries were the most common?” I asked, noticing her gaze linger behind me.
"From the nukes, we had burned retinas, radiation sickness, thermal burns, and blast injuries. Radiation poisoning, of course. The fun stuff," she replied, her voice a mix of grim experience and dry humor. "Aside from the nuclear fallout, it was a melting pot of burn and blast injuries from the crabs’ weapons, fractures, and traumatic burns. Hell, there were even a few cases of limbs torn off from our guys who were foolish or desperate enough to engage the crabs hand-to-hand. Those were rare, but not pleasant. When that happened, the tourniquet would often be surrounded by mold and infection, and we had to amputate several centimeters above the injury just to be sure."
She paused, her eyes distant for a moment before continuing. "Sometimes, they’d walk around as if they didn’t have a care in the world, forgetting the limbs or cartilage they’d lost. One would disappear from a tent and reappear a hundred meters away if you took your eyes off them. We had to write on their foreheads with markers to remind us which tent they were supposed to be in, and if we didn’t cuff their ankles or wrists to the field beds, they'd take off on their own. Hell, sometimes they'd even grab the beds and go for a hike."
She let out a loud laugh, and the couple sitting next to us shifted uncomfortably, their faces a mix of disbelief and horror.
“There was this one French soldier,” she continued, shaking her head. “He was convinced his comrades were outside, under the plastic tarps. With one hand missing, he struggled to flip the tarps over to find them. It took two police officers to restrain him and sit him down. Honestly, there was something in that ‘crustacean matter’ that made people lose it.”
The doctors, nurses, and volunteers were affected too. I remember one nun—she was Congolese, I think—who had been cleaning an APC that had been used to carry the dead to the mass grave. She’d spent a good part of an hour scrubbing away the blood inside. If I recall correctly, she became hyperfocused on it. They’d told her it didn’t need to be spotless since it was headed to the front lines, but she just couldn’t let go.
When the APC had to leave with the convoy, she lost it. She started shouting abominations for half an hour and hurled the empty bucket toward me, demanding more warm water. Maybe it was the endless stream of the dead and dying, the constant hum of helicopters, the controlled chaos, or the stench of bodies and blood that drove her to that point.
Honestly, I’m not surprised I don’t remember much of what happened with her. Who would notice a madman in a camp full of them ?