The first drops of rain pattered against the transparent plastic covering my face, closely followed by the growing intensity of clicks from the Geiger counter on my chest.
That was all that was needed for the half a dozen engineers still on the base to drop what they were doing and sprint with me back inside.
"That's the sixth time in the past week that this black shit's fallen from the sky." Harry muttered, "What's even the point of these suits if we have to run at the first drops of black rain?"
I looked at the man, who only a week ago, had been a random electrical engineer, who had woken up late for his job at the Poseidon Energy Nuclear Plant. Lucky son of a bitch owed his life to a little late-night partying.
Now he was a sergeant, wearing an ill-fitting uniform we'd found for him on base, and like almost all of us, his handsome features were gone, replaced with the scarring so many of us were suffering from.
"We still had civilians waiting in line for admittance the first time. Very few of them survived, and those that did turned out like us. Quite a few promptly went mad and attacked the first person who didn't look like they'd just survived a house fire. If we're teetering on the edge of insanity, standing in fallout-tainted rain won't do us any favours. You want to be the next in line to get a bullet in the dome?"
"Forget I even asked."
"Whatever was in that rain stopped the refugees from coming too."
"I said I get it!"
"Just pray it stops soon," I smirked, "Then you guys can finish up on what repairs the vertiberds still need."
He thought for a moment, "One thing I still don't understand is how we're all gonna fit aboard what we have. The oh-twos we have, despite being an upgrade, only have one space extra, and the oh-ones aren't exactly roomy for long distances."
"We…" I cleared my throat, reaching to scratch my nose only to grab air, "We aren't taking everyone. Some soldiers, and important professions, the latter of which are currently going through incredibly basic training just so they don't blow their own heads off."
"And everyone else will be left to die?" There was alarm in his voice.
"The doctors have agreed amongst each other on who's staying and who's leaving, same with the soldiers. If you're worried about coming with us or not, don't be. Everyone but Meadow is leaving from the engineers." She nodded in response to her name.
"But what about those that stay?"
"They'll survive for longer. Fewer people to feed and keep radiation-free."
"They'll also have fewer guns for when the irradiated finally decide to go cross-country."
"Believe me, no number of extra guns will keep them from levelling this place were they to get moving."
He was talking about the thousands of irradiated, madness-stricken people that had been discovered by scouts sometime last week, milling about in Cambridge thanks to the ground-level nuke that had blasted a hole in the town. Less damage, but more radiation.
Fuck the Reds.
"Oh shit, I think the rain's letting up!" Miller called out, the intensity of the rain quickly dwindled to nothing.
"Good, now let's get back to work. Those vertiberds will never get back in the air if we sit around on our asses."
----------------------------------------
"Let's make sure, one last time, what the hell we're going to be doing." Jacob stood up, looking around the table at everyone else.
"We've already heard the plan twice." Doctor Cullen grunted, only to avert his gaze when the withering stare of the Colonel's black eyes focused on him.
"Maybe you have, but this is the first time we're all here. Once we're up in the air, there's no knowing how long communications will last between vehicles, nor is there any guarantee will be able to stick together all the way to Clarkston. One fuck up can cost either some or all of us this whole fucking mission, which is why it's crucial everyone has the details in their head."
"Right… Sorry." He mumbled.
Jacob's attention was back on the entire team before him, everyone who was coming with us, that we could spare for this meeting.
"We've got seven vertiberds, two oh-twos and the rest are oh-ones. That means we can take a maximum of thirty-seven passengers, along with the fourteen pilots, out of which each vehicle will have at least one person with flight experience, be that military experience or civilian. We're leaving tomorrow night, maybe that way we won't get used as target practice like Martinez's test flight was two days ago."
"Could do without the extra breathing holes appearing in the side this time." The Staff Sergeant agreed.
"And couldn't we search for more vertiberds? Maybe at Fort Hagen, that way we could take more people with us."
"We don't have the time, nor the resources for that, Dylan. Those that are staying will have the compound's automated protection, and more than a dozen of my men. Not to mention all the power armour and guns we're leaving here. Even with what we're taking with us, the supplies here will keep them well-supplied for months."
"How much are we taking with us, Sir?" Staff Sergeant Tucker questioned.
"Enough radiation protection medicine to last us for a good while, along with two days of food extra than what our calculated route would need. Some medical supplies, and extra ammo for the laser and ballistic weapons we'll be taking. Three power armours, just in case, even though they take up the space of two people, I'm willing to sacrifice that space for the extra protection."
"Sir?" Miller lifted his hand.
"Yes, Corporal?"
"How are we going to keep the fuel in check? With what was stored here, and from what we scrounged up from the nearby landing pads, there's more than enough fuel to get us all the way to Clarkston, but the coolant will be a problem. These girls don't use the regular stuff you put in your car either," He chuckled, "We need military bases to restock the coolant levels."
"I've come prepared for that." The colonel slapped a map down in the middle, and opened it up, "This is the map of all known military bases, updated a month before the bombs dropped. I've crossed out the bigger establishments that we can be sure were hit, and though it makes the journey last longer, we can hop between the smaller bases. Twelve hours is all we need to get to Clarkston, though it depends on the terrain we're going to fly over."
"How does it depend? We'll be flying over all the horrible shit." The doctor asked.
"We can't fly through high radiation areas, for starters, because A, we'll die, B, our electronics will die and then we'll die, or C, the engines will clog up from the dust and we crash… and die. A lot of ways to die, not at all worth the hassle."
"While we're on the topic of radiation, what sort of protection will we have with us, Sir, other than the pills?"
"No full radiation suits, that's for certain. We have a lot of lead plating from Fort Strong, we'll replace the metal in our vests with lead. It's softer and heavier, but hopefully, we won't need to get in a firefight. Everyone will also get a gas mask, lead-lined, and that's it. It's the best we can do, without killing our mobility too much."
"And what if one of the rotten-" The Doctor looked around the room and raised his hands placatingly, "-No offence to any of you, goes mad mid-ride?"
"Fuck you, Pat, we can still leave your ass behind, your profession be damned." Miller retorted.
"Very few neurosurgeons out in the world after all this." He gestured outside.
"Stop the bickering you two, he brought up a valid point, for once." Jacob silenced the two, "If that were to happen, I guess the entire vertiberd crew is fucked, but that's just a risk we must take. Any more questions?" Nobody answered, "Good! Tomorrow, twenty-hundred hours, sharp. Say goodbye to whomever you have to until then."
----------------------------------------
"You ready yet, Harry?"
"Sir, I'm sorry to say, but this ain't as easy as I sometimes make it seem. Properly wiring this thing? Never was an easy task, much less now, with second-hand resources."
"I understand that, but we're leaving in an hour. Neither the Colonel nor I want to be late."
"Yes, sir." He grunted.
My radio clicked, and I was quick to lift it to my face.
"Calling Lieutenant Colonel Teach."
"This is Teach."
"How does it look like? Will we be ready in time?"
"We're trying our best here, but Harry's right, this isn't exactly something you can safely rush."
There was silence for a while.
"Copy, try what you can."
I stared down the row of vertiberds and took in the sorry sight. Half of them were from Fort Strong, the other half had been the ones either still on the ground at the time of the bombs dropping or the lucky few that had managed to return.
Most of them were the versions I had gotten used to on the front, except for two… The prototypes, one of which I'd ridden back here. They looked less bulky than their big brothers, yet somehow, they had more space inside. According to Jacob, there had been half a dozen of them on active missions throughout the region right before the bombs dropped, and triple that of the older versions. The two prototypes and another two of the older versions had returned.
Those two were the lucky ones, being hand-me-downs from the front rather than built specifically for the National Guard. Ones that were destined for the front had proper EMP protection, not like it mattered much when the nuclear shockwave knocked you out of the sky.
My attention was brought back to Harry and the vertiberd he was working on when something sparked under his hand, and he cursed.
"What's going on?" I raised an eyebrow.
"Shit." Was all he said as smoke started to billow from the exhaust vents of the vehicle.
"Get away from that!" I yelled.
No sooner had I turned around, than a massive blast spread through the air, the shockwave sending me flying as the heat seared my back.
Even with the ear protection I had, my ears rang as I heard the muffled shouts of soldiers all around me, rushing to tend to the flames.
Someone very gently flipped me over and looked me up and down. The eyeholes of my gas mask were wiped down, and I finally saw one of the medics standing over me.
At first, all I could hear above the ringing was his muffled voice.
"-hear me, sir?" His muted voice finally became clear enough to understand.
I nodded, only to grunt as I felt the strain in my neck.
"I- I'm fine… Harry?"
"Nothing we can do for him, sir… He died painlessly."
I didn't even have the time to swear when my radio clicked, and I wearily lifted it to my face.
"What the fuck was that! James?!"
"The vertiberd's… Well, I don't know what happened, but it's gone, Harry too."
"Shit… And you saw it happen?"
"Yeah."
"Then get in here as soon as you can."
I sighed, and slowly sat up, waving away the medic.
We hadn't even left the ground yet, and things were already going to shit.
----------------------------------------
"Now tell me, what exactly happened."
"Something sparked under Harry's hand, he cursed, and a moment later smoke started billowing out of the vents. Then it exploded."
"Lieutenant?" He turned to look at the third man in the room, the highest-ranking engineer we had out of the five still on the base.
"Sounds like whatever happened, it must've set off the fuel. Was the smoke white?"
"Well, about as white as regular smoke."
"These things don't have regular smoke. If it was white, that means the coolant was vented."
"The engine wasn't running though, so that can't be it."
"It doesn't need to run for it to happen. Two chemicals are pumped into the vertiberds, which are instantly mixed together inside the fuel tank. This mixture is extremely volatile when the temperature is above freezing, so we've got the coolant for that. When the engine's running, it's separating tiny drops from the cooled tank, which promptly heat up and explode by themselves inside the engine compartment. With no coolant, the entire fuel tank turned volatile and exploded."
"Thank you for the engineering class, Kyle-" Before the Colonel could continue his sarcasm, a garbled voice called over my radio.
"-I repeat, this is an urgent message to Colonel Veer!" He motioned for me to respond.
"This is Lieutenant Colonel Teach, what is it soldier?"
"Sir, Sergeant Mayhew reporting-" It cut off for a moment, "-Irradiated humans are on the move! ETA in fifteen minutes!"
A look of horror crawled onto Jacob's face.
"We're leaving right now!" He roared, "This is not a drill. Lieutenant, turn on the automated defences, they'll buy us some time.
Barging out of the door, all three of us started yelling as loud as we could, both into the radio and down the corridors of the building.
Soon soldiers were sprinting outside, weapons in hand, and escorting the select few civilians that were coming with us.
"Jacob… We're down a vertiberd." I told the Colonel sprinting beside me.
"We don't have the time to rethink, look!"
He pointed at an APC cresting over the hill in the distance.
I watched, aghast, as it toppled over and continued sliding on its side for a while, the scouts inside jumping out as soon as it stopped, and without any hesitation continued sprinting towards the base.
Then it arrived.
Swarming over the hill, crashing against the APC like some living tidal wave, was what was probably Concord's inhabitants.
The sea of crazed humans soon engulfed the fleeing soldiers, the bullets they fired no use against them.
Their feral growls and screams were no longer drowned out by the wind, and as it got louder, so did the staccato taps and laser booms start up, but it all felt worthless.
Looking at the burning remains of the vertiberd, the group that was supposed to ride it was wide-eyed as Jacob quickly sorted them out.
One of the soldiers, who had been selected to stay behind in a split-second decision grabbed the Colonel's arm in protest and was promptly knocked out by Jacob.
This book was originally published on Royal Road. Check it out there for the real experience.
Two soldiers in power armour stopped beside the vehicles, a third man not far behind, a part of the other soldiers wearing power armour and carrying gatling lasers, firing upon the infinite mass of humans approaching. In the distance, the automated turrets came online, further adding to the firepower we were unleashing upon them.
Jumping inside my vertiberd, the minigun attached to its side revved up as I fitted the headpiece over my head and the vehicle lifted into the air.
Jacob's voice filled my head.
"Leave! Leave right now!"
The order wasn't questioned as the other vehicles quickly followed our lead.
While the heavy artillery we were peppering the swiftly approaching swarm with was causing the front of the wave to buckle, it still felt incredibly useless.
They reached the outer fence, which folded under their weight like it was paper.
The soldiers still firing from the courtyard realized that they'd left their retreat for too long and were getting engulfed even as they tried their best to get back inside.
"They've still got a chance, where's the sentry bot?" One of the soldiers muttered hopefully over the comms.
"Forget about it, man… Even a sentry bot won't do jack shit against that." Came the reply.
The small arms fire died away, and with the automated defences still working, the swarm of irradiated humans turned their attention towards the building housing said defences.
In the blink of an eye… They were gone. All the people I had spent the last two weeks trying to keep alive, just dead in a matter of minutes.
Just like everyone else in the vehicle, I too couldn't rip my eyes from Devereux Training Yard as it slowly receded into the distance, the horde of feral humans churning on the courtyard looking like ants swarming a picnic.
"While comms are still active between vehicles, report numbers."
Hearing the numbers being called in only made us feel worse.
----------------------------------------
"We're nearing the first refuel location, report when you have a visual," I told the pilots. We were one of the lucky ones, with a full vehicle.
There was only one other like ours, the others were either missing pilots or passengers. Rather than the fifty-one people were had planned to set out with, we only had twenty-nine.
"Yessir."
An hour or so had passed since take off, and we were probably somewhere around Lake Ontario if I had to guess. The doors had closed shortly after leaving Boston, but I didn't need to see the land around us to know what it would look like.
The gaunt expressions of everyone on board had a soul-killing effect, and what should have been an amazing experience, finally leaving to better the world, was soured by what we'd witnessed and lost.
"What do you guys think is under us?" One of the soldiers spoke over the intercom.
"Take a guess, fuckass."
"Whoa, calm down man. Only trying to make small talk."
"This ain't the time for small talk. The world's gone to shit and most probably everyone we know is dead."
"I'll believe that when I see them dead in front of me. Sure, a lot of people died when the bombs dropped, and many more since then, but I'm not willing to lose hope. After all, we're still alive, right? Gotta count for something."
"Keep that philosophy, and you'll end up dead quickly, and you'll probably bring the rest of us down with you. This world ain't the world before, and you either adapt, or you die."
The pilot talking over the headsets stopped their argument.
"Bad news, sir. Landing Zone's gone."
"A bomb?"
"Not a nuke, but something big took out the base. Even if we could land, there wouldn't be anything to refuel from."
"Can you try for a connection on the main channel?"
Half a minute passed before the pilot replied, "You're on, sir!"
"This is Lieutenant Colonel Teach, calling for the Colonel."
"I'm here, you got the news too?"
"Yeah, will we have enough until the next stop?"
"I made sure to calculate for this, we're going to be fine for a while yet. There's a smaller air depo in Kingston, that's surely still working."
"Where were we now?"
"Fort-"
"Mayday, Mayday, Mayday, we just lost all power to engine two!"
My eyes widened, and I could feel everyone's attention on me, they themselves unaware of the other side of the communication.
"Land your vehicle at once, pilot!"
"Sir!"
I stood up and tried looking out of the small slits on the side of the vehicle. I could see the vertiberd in question quickly descending, one engine spitting out smoke as it made an awkward manoeuvre downwards.
The pilot who had signalled the problem said nothing over the comms, right as a bright light made me whip my eyes away, my roar of annoyance muffled by the explosion that rocked our vertiberd.
"What the hell was that?" I read off the mouth of one of the soldiers.
I didn't answer as I tried listening to the comms.
"Shit! That propeller barely missed us!" One of the pilots exclaimed.
"Any damages to report?" The Colonel asked.
All the vertiberds came back with a negatory response.
"Nobody could've survived that blast, we're not stopping. Continue onwards to the next refuel point and everyone keep an eye on your vehicles for any signs of damage. Whatever happened to them, it might happen to someone else, and we might be able to catch it on the ground to stop this from happening. Last thing we want is another explosion that'll take out the rest of our formation."
----------------------------------------
"My engine's stalling!"
"Robertson, that's why you don't just fucking fly through an ash cloud!"
"Shut it, it's a bit late to lecture me, ain't it? I'll try and land this baby."
I waited anxiously for some sort of sign that they were alive.
"Gently, mate. Caress the ground like you're caressing a lover."
No response, until a voice came over the intercom.
"They crash-landed sir, but even from here I can see movement-"
"We're not going down for them. We have to continue." Jacob ordered.
"But-"
"Soldier, if you don't shut your mouth right now, the first thing I'll do is report you for insubordination. Follow your orders, they'll survive just fine. One of the power armours is with them, and we're not far from the last outpost. All of us saw the stockpile still there, they'll survive for months without having to scavenge."
With the rest of the vertiberd's passengers clueless about what had just gone down outside, I sighed. I wasn't happy about abandoning our own men and women, I had to agree with Jacob. Once we got to our destination, we could ask for help and come pick them back up.
However, risking everyone else's safety for them wasn't a viable option. The six soldiers that had been alive at that last base were now a part of our group, and the supplies they'd left behind were going to be enough for the crash-landing survivors.
How many more were we going to lose before we reached Clarkston?
----------------------------------------
"Lieutenant Colonel!" Came the static-filled call over the radio, as the vertiberd was thrown to the side, "We've lost contact with the others."
"Just keep-" Another jolt, followed by the crash of thunder, "-Keep going!"
The vertiberd bucked up and down, the soldiers in the vehicle trying their best to keep calm, but more than one of them was white-faced with fear.
Suddenly, amidst a crash of thunder, and the small slits in the side of the vehicle lighting up with bright light, I felt the vehicle head downwards.
"Report!" I barked into the radio.
"We've lost control, we're heading straight for the ground!"
"Brace yourselves!" I roared, and for what felt like an eternity we waited, before there was a massive jolt, and a part of the floor down the middle of the vertiberd was stripped away to reveal the ground sliding past us.
The horrific sensation that at any second we'd become one with flames soon vanished as we came to a stop.
"What… The… Fuck!" Someone exclaimed.
"Is everyone alright?" I called over the storm, getting a show of thumbs up, "Take some RadX, then once we're ready, you open the door, Mary."
The soldier in question nodded, and though some did so rather shakily, they took out their bottles and took their life-saving pills, as did I. Covering our faces with gas masks, and making sure our entire body was covered, I signalled for Mary to open up the vehicle's door.
She strained against the door a bit before it opened, revealing a desolate land that could've once been planted with a variety of plants, but had since been scorched by nuclear flames.
Eerily glowing clouds above us threw out forks of lighting now and again as we stepped onto the cracked ground.
"The pilots?" One of the soldiers asked, their voices barely audible from behind the mask and with the thunder booming around us.
I strode forward, only to see the entire front of the vehicle crushed by rocks, most probably thrown up as we slid to a halt.
Shaking my head at them, more than one shoulder drooped at the news.
"Listen up!" I roared over the noise, and all eyes were on me, "We've still got a mission, and I sure as hell ain't ready to give up, because that means I'll die in this unforgiving wasteland. We'll take a bit of a breather, then we'll get going before the radiation overwhelms the RadX." I looked at the Geiger counter clicking on my wrist and frowned, the expression hidden by my mask.
The radiation level was high, even for what could be considered the new normal.
"Sir!" The soldier who had spoken was pointing at something behind my back, and as I turned, I noticed the smoke coiling into the air, and the rough outline of a vertiberd.
"Someone, grab a flare from inside!" I called, and not a moment later there was a red light sailing through the air.
Two other flares soon joined it in the sky, and I couldn't help but let off a laugh of relief. Being the flare in the middle, we stayed where we were, until figures appeared through the fog.
"Good to see so many of you alive!" Came the shout of Jacob, and the tense feeling in my shoulders vanished.
As he joined us, quickly followed by the third group of survivors, we realized that there were only fourteen of us left, including one single unit of power armour.
"How far are we from our destination? Can we make it on foot?"
"Our last stop, in Belle Fourche, had been two or so hours away from Clarkston by air, and we made it quite a distance from that before crashing. I'd say we're somewhere near Helena, that was quite a Military Hotspot on the map, no doubt the Reds would see it as a target. That would explain all of this" Jacob gestured at our surroundings.
"Even a twenty-minute trip by vertiberd, going at the speeds we were going at, could mean days of travel on foot."
"How much do we have in terms of supplies?"
The people surrounding us started searching through their packs, and soon we had a rough estimate of how many days we could go.
"This won't be enough to last us the entire trip, even with rationing. We'll be burning a fuck ton of calories with all that walking too."
"Do you have any better ideas?" Jacob snapped, and I raised my hands placatingly. He sighed, "Look, we don't have any other option right now. Once we're out of this wasteland, we'll scavenge something in one of the towns. Tucker!"
"Sir!"
"You're in charge of navigation. Now everyone, let's head out. The sooner we leave the rads behind, the better off we'll be."
----------------------------------------
"How many of them do you think there are?"
"Three, maybe four…" I lowered the binoculars and looked at Jacob, "Is this really the right thing to do?"
He sighed, "I dislike this as much as you do, but things have changed in this world. We've tried trading with them, but they pointed guns at us, and shot Richie in the leg."
"But… They have kids."
"I'm aware." He scowled, before turning back towards the group of scavengers camping out in a shopping mall. We'd entered the abandoned city of Missoula two days after crashing, with only crumbs in our backpacks and on the last few drops of water.
Spotting the mall had been an amazing feeling until we met the inhabitants.
Thankfully, we'd managed to hole up in a house with some spare cans of cram lying about the place. We'd drunk from the toilet's tank, a surprisingly untouched water source until we came across it, and patched up Richie, right before the guys managed to shoot a deer.
It had ugly tumours over much of its body, but hunger won at the end of the day, so we cut off the tumours and ate the meat with a healthy dose of Radaway. Nobody had come down with radiation sickness, so it had worked.
And now we were here, planning an assault on the mall. Even with the deer, we'd not have the supplies to last us even half our remaining journey.
"I hate to agree with you on this," I sighed, counting the gunmen again, "But can't we try and save the kids somehow?"
"It's either them or us James, they made that decision yesterday. Call in our numbers, yeah?"
I lifted the radio to my mouth and cleared my throat, "Counted four guns on West side, report?"
The groups of two chimed in with counts of their own. We were dealing with about sixteen-armed people. Not soldiers though. Civilians.
They didn't have the training we did.
"We're outnumbered, " Jacob hissed, "But we've got our experiences to back us up… We use that to our advantage."
"We've got Tim's power armour, we should use the last of its juice here. Power core wouldn't last us the rest of the journey to Clarkston anyway."
"Good start, but they've got enough weapons between them that Tim getting surrounded is a real danger."
"A sniper would come real handy…"
"Sniper?" Jacob's eyes glanced towards the roof, "What if we were to scale the building?"
I looked at the parking lot towering beside the building, "Like through that?" I pointed at it, and Jacob smiled.
"We'll make a bridge or something and climb over, hit them from the inside while Tim and two others serve as a distraction from the front."
Giving a smile of approval, I once again lifted the radio to my lips, "Regroup at home. We've got a plan."
----------------------------------------
Gunfire erupted near the building's entrance, breaking the silence of a dead city as the assault began.
"Go! Every second counts!" Jacob ordered.
With a grunt, we thrust the massive metal beam we'd found on a nearby construction site right over the guard rail. It slid across it effortlessly and carried onward straight into the wall of windows opposite us side, before coming to an abrupt stop.
Jumping onto the beam, we ran over to the other side as fast as we dared, making sure the corridor was clear as we spread out across the top floor of the mall.
Then it was simply a matter of going from store to store, noting down those that might be worth coming back to search.
A door crashed open before us, and two people ran outside. We opened fire as soon as we saw the glint of guns in their hands, and they collapsed, surprise etched on their faces.
Someone screamed inside the room, and we headed inside, making sure that we wouldn't be surprised.
Sitting on the floor, curled up against one another were a ten-year-old girl and a young woman.
I lowered my gun as I watched them quiver in fear, before noticing from the corner of my eyes that my comrade wasn't following my lead.
"Brother… Mitch, lower your gun, these folk aren't going to hurt anyone." I muttered, gently pushing down his rifle.
Though slightly hesitantly, he nodded.
I got closer to the pair, and knelt before them, still trying to keep my distance so as not to scare them. They sure as hell didn't need my presence right now.
"Fuck… Off." The woman muttered, her hands twitching.
"Look Ma'am, we mean no harm… We have no intention of hurting-"
"I'm not letting you fuckers near me ever again!" She screamed, and before I could react, I was staring down the barrel of a 10mm pistol.
Mitch raised his rifle, but I gestured for him to stop. My heart was thumping in my throat as I slowly composed myself.
"I understand you may have had terrible… experiences with the military before us." I tried thinking about the best way of defusing the situation, knowing full well the horrors rogue military units could inflict, "But I assure you, all of this is only happening because we're desperate and because you offered us no other option the last time we came. We do not want to cause any more damage than what is unavoidable."
"All of you fascist cocksuckers are the same! All you needed was the world to end to… to…" Tears started flowing down her cheek, but the gun didn't waver.
"We aren't the same, believe me, I've known my fair share of cocksuckers in the army…" I smirked, "Everything I'm doing, that I'm going to do for rebuilding the world, it'll be to see my family again. My wife, Natalie and my baby boy, Shaun. Can I show them to you?"
She thought for a moment, before nodding.
I carefully reached for my pocket, where my wallet was, in which their pictures were enclosed.
It all happened in the blink of an eye.
A gunshot, louder than what any of us expected, and her fingers twitched on the trigger.
Then another shot, from right beside me as Mitch reacted to the movement.
Before I knew what was going on, she was laying on the ground, the girl she had been holding staring at her body in shock.
Glaring at Mitch, my attention was brought back to the woman as she spoke in a shrill voice, the girl beside her paralysed.
"You…" She screamed, "I'm not letting you h-hurt us a-a-a…" She closed her mouth and lifted the pistol.
"No, please, let us-"
The gun moved past me and aimed at her daughter.
"Don't-" Mitch started, but the round was already out of the chamber, and the girl, still wide-eyed with shock, slumped over, her eyes rolling up into her head as blood trickled down the bridge of her nose.
"Not… her." Those were the last words of the woman before her grip went limp.
Mitch fell to his knees, and we just stared at the scene, all the various emotions we were feeling keeping us from moving.
----------------------------------------
The events of the fight were still fresh in my mind, even hours later, as we packed up, getting ready to leave first thing tomorrow.
It hadn't lasted long, especially once the gunmen realised we were inside the building. We took what we needed to complete our journey and only that, leaving them plenty more to survive for months, but the entire event had had a sour aftertaste, and not just for me.
So much needless death, all because they didn't trust us in the beginning.
Tim slapped a new fusion core into his armour, having found a dozen in the mall's robot maintenance shop, then slowly settled down into his sleeping bag.
"You alright?" Jacob asked, slapping my shoulder. I shrugged, staring at the wall in front of me, "I know what we did today wasn't enjoyable for any of us, I wish it could've gone differently too." He sighed, "A lot of the dead I saw were young… Too young to be in a gunfight."
"Too young to die," I muttered.
"Yeah, if I could go back in time, I'd somehow stop the bombs from dropping. If that failed, I'd make sure to join my family in that vault… Rather be in there, living the rest of my life without seeing the ground above, than out here, having to kill kids my son's age just to survive. Anyway-" He rubbed his face, "I'm getting off-topic. I've known you long enough to see that something's bothering you. Just know, when you want to talk about it, you can talk with me."
"You've known me for a few months."
"In the apocalypse that's a lifetime." He smiled sourly, "Let's get some shut-eye in before the sun comes up."
With a nod, I was about to lie down, when I noticed Mitch stride outside. Quickly making up my mind, I got up and followed him.
He was sitting on the porch railing, trying to light a broken cigarette with shaking hands.
"Hey," I leaned beside him.
He didn't respond, just continued looking at the pitch-black city just beyond our measly lights.
"I'm a murderer." He finally grunted.
"You were scared for your life-"
"Don't bullshit me, James." I ignored the insubordination, military ranks meant nothing in today's world anyway, it was just a sign of respect most of the time, "I saw the look you gave me after I pulled the trigger. If I didn't react the way I did, the two of them might've survived this day."
"I might've been too harsh back there, man." I looked at my feet, "Me showing my family might've done jackshit, in which case you saved me from a bullet. Whatever it was that happened to them before we arrived, there was a good reason for that reaction."
"Torture… Rape... Actions bordering genocide… We heard the rumours from the front even in Boston."
"Most rumours have some truth at the very core, unfortunately."
He nodded, taking a long draw, before handing it to me. I hadn't really smoked since the bombs dropped, but as I swallowed the first lungful of smoke, I finally realized just how much I needed one.
"I close my eyes, and I can still see the girl's face…" He muttered, "I never killed anyone, well, except for the mad folk that attacked me back at Devereux, but that felt different. Hell, I joined the national guard knowing deep down that the Reds reaching the mainland, not to mention Boston, would be impossible, especially after we kicked them out of Alaska. Being in the national guard gave me a fair share of problems to solve, but nowhere were they as dangerous as being on the front. I could at least feel like I was helping my country."
"You were trained how to kill people, but you never realise what that really means until you've seen your first death up close." I nodded, handing him back the cigarette, "It's then that you realise that the people you are fighting against aren't mindless robots. They have families waiting back home… They had a childhood, just like you. And it gets even worse with civilians, who were simply in the wrong place at the wrong time."
"How do you cope with it?"
"It's hard." I cleared my throat, trying to clear the sensation that a tennis ball was stuck in it, "I try and remember that if I didn't kill them, then I would've been the one dead, breaking my family's heart. My family, that's what kept me going, they're more important to me than anything else, and if, at the end of the day I get to see them happy, the journey to that day feels like a necessary evil."
"I don't have a family." He grunted, getting lost in his thoughts for minutes, "Everyone I had was from Milford. Parents, siblings, girlfriend…"
I hesitated with my next words, "Then maybe think about your future family? You're still alive, and while you are, there's a chance for you to start a new life."
He nodded, but his gaze became distant.
"Thanks, for trying to help." He smiled sadly, patting my shoulder. There was a waver in his voice I picked up on, but ignored.
There were thoughts in him that I couldn't help him with.
"No worries, now don't stay outside too long, you'll need the sleep for tomorrow. We're going to be helping to restore the country soon."
He grinned, but there was no joy behind it.
I headed inside and snuggled inside my sleeping bag, yet sleep was eluding me.
Unfortunately, I had seen more than my fair share of broken soldiers. Sometimes they'd figure it out themselves, but it was a dangerous game, leaving it festering inside you. A shrink could easily help, but like many professions these days, they weren't exactly easy to find.
Half an hour passed us by, and everyone settled down, the last of the lamps being turned off.
Everyone was inside, except for Mitch.
More time passed in the darkness, when, suddenly, a flash of light from outside lit up our room, accompanied by the sharp crack of a sidearm.
As everyone else jumped up and grabbed for guns, rushing outside to eliminate the perceived threat, I just sat up and stared at the grime-covered wall once more.
Tears flowed freely from my eyes now, the pent-up emotions ever since the bombs dropped, from Pete's death to losing my family and then the APC convoy from Sanctuary, to the death of my comrades and that Mother with her child.
When would this shit be over?