Chapter One - If a Gun Goes Off in an Empty Food Court, Does It Still Make a Sound?
Apocalypse Prediction is an interesting science. Every few decades some important event or calendar date will roll around where some ancient civilization said “this is the day the world will end!”, and inevitably nothing comes of it. But for the most part, apocalypse prediction is just a bunch of doomsayers repeating, “THIS time there’s going to be an apocalypse!” year after year.
Surprisingly, they weren’t very smug when the Antithesis invaded and proved them right.
—2046 TED Talk on the 2022 Antithesis Invasion
***
I was in the middle of my lunch break when the incursion started. I’d just been served a cheap curry by an underpaid teenager when all the lights turned red, sirens started howling, and everyone’s aug-gear received the same “INCURSION DETECTED!” pop-up. I was exhausted, enjoying a bowl of “curry”, and quite used to adware pop-ups, so all of this did surprisingly little to disturb me.
The alien drop-pod crashing into our building, on the other hand, scared the shit out of me.
I promptly swallowed half my spork and fell to the ground, choking to death. I couldn’t cry for help, and no one heard my broken gasps over the sirens. Worse still, the stampede of people rushing to the shelter ended up trampling me.
I felt a fingerbone snap as a boot smashed it into the cheap tile of the food court, and my head reeled from the flailing kick of a child being picked up by his mother. The impact at least had the decency to halfway-dislodge the spork, but I didn’t have time to celebrate my “good” fortune before another rush of people hammered me back into the floor. Agonizing pain flared in my leg as it was dislocated by a stumbling runner, and my brain finally declared that it had had enough—with no oxygen to breathe, and excruciating injuries across my body, I blacked out.
***
I woke up to the sound of distant gunfire. My vision was blurry, and partially covered by a few strands of long, blond hairs that had escaped my man bun (something which my dad liked to tell me had never been in style, but I maintained that he was just jealous). Pain still stabbed across my body, but I did my best to at least peel my head off the floor and look around. The food court was deserted and quiet, save for a few ad kiosks chattering away in the corner. The floor was slick with spilled drinks and a bit of blood… Oh, wait, that was my blood. When did I break my nose?
Suddenly, the sliding doors on the other side of the food court were forced open with a harsh scrape. Two men—security guards for one of the stores in the mall, based on their dinky pistols and low-budget uniforms—rushed through the gap and let the doors snap shut behind them. Despite having weapons, they looked just as scared as I was. The one who went through first, a heavily overweight man with receding hair and a lightly bleeding cut on his cheek, looked to his partner with wide eyes. “They’re going to reach the shelter if we keep running this way. We have to draw them up to the next floor.”
Fatguy’s buddy, an overly muscular man with a mop of unruly red hair, looked at him like he was crazy. “Are you fuckin’ kidding me? I’m not dying for fuckin’ Macy’s! Those security locks ain’t gonna hold them for long; I’m gettin’ in that shelter with the rest of ‘em.”
He was right: the doors didn’t hold them for long.
With a sharp crack, an alien form crashed through the supposedly bulletproof glass of the food court door and tackled the bodybuilder. He fell forward, screaming as the alien clamped its jaws over the back of his neck. He struggled to get the relatively small form off his back, then suddenly stopped moving as fangs sunk into his spine with a wet crunch. Fatguy backed up in horror, forgetting his gun for a few seconds as he watched his partner get turned into an alien’s snack.
I, meanwhile, didn’t have time for horror. I was trying to lie as still as possible, for fear that I’d black out from the pain or be noticed. I didn’t want to get involved in any of that mess, and certainly couldn’t when I already had my own mess of broken bones. Still, I knew that my current course of action wasn’t sustainable—the Antithesis were all about munching on dead bodies, so I wasn’t going to get out of this by playing dead like I was in the middle of a bear attack (at least, that’s what my grandfather had told me to do during a bear attack—grizzlies had been extinct in Montana for longer than I’ve been alive).
That led me to the last complicating factor: the gun lying a few feet away from my head. Bodybuilder had flung it away in his panic to get the alien off him, and it had landed next to me. I didn’t have any experience with firearms—not unless I counted online Mesh-shooters—but it was probably my only chance to not end up next on the menu. The trouble was reaching it.
I stifled a scream of agony as I inched forward, trying to ignore the sounds behind me. The pain in my dislocated leg flared up as I accidentally nudged it against a table leg, but I had to ignore it. The floor tiles felt cool against the bruises I’d gained from the stampede of fleeing shoppers, even as I slid over crushed packets of condiments and salt that burned against patches of split skin. My head pounded in time with my pulse, coaxing more pain from my injuries with each hammerblow. Still, I pushed forward.
After what felt like an eternity, I could finally reach the pistol. An alert popped up in my vision as I slapped a hand over it, warning me that I was “unauthorized to use a Macy’s-brand Guardian Carry 2.0”. After dismissing the useless pop-up from my eye-gear, I pulled myself up against a nearby chair and looked back at the other side of the room. The alien was still munching on Bodybuilder, which gave me some time, but two more of its friends were starting to push their way through the shattered glass of the food court’s doors.
Looking at them more closely, I recognized the Model: Antithesis Model Three. Looked kinda like a mid-sized dog, if dogs were ugly and made of plants. My elementary school’s anti-Antithesis cartoons mainly consisted of “this is how dead you are if you see one of these”, but there were some good tidbits here and there: Model Threes were fast and strong, but also relatively easy to put down. They liked to flank you when you weren’t looking, but could be handled in small numbers. Three of them in one room… It was pushing it, but I had a gun now.
Fatguy finally remembered he had a gun too and opened up. For a mall cop, the guy sure could shoot. All three shots hit the first Antithesis center-mass and it flopped down, obviously dead. There was no time to celebrate, however—the first of the other two Model Threes cleared the remaining glass and charged into the room, angling for Fatguy. The security guard had time to fire two more shots, both grazing the xeno’s side, before it jumped on him. He stumbled and fell backwards, cracking his head on the floor as he attempted to hold the Model Three off.
For a full second, I thought about just letting those alien bastards chew on Fatguy while I made my escape. It would be easy—they hadn’t noticed me yet, and I was on the opposite side of the room. Even in my current state, I could probably hobble my way out of the nearby emergency exit and into an incursion shelter before they even finished eating.
I started to get up to leave, then paused. A few minutes ago, Fatguy’d seemed perfectly willing to draw the Antithesis away and sacrifice himself in the process. With my own life on the line, I’d normally have wished him the best of luck and been on my merry way, but seeing him now… I couldn’t do it. This random security guard was noble enough to give up his life for others, and here I was just letting him get eaten by an overglorified weed.
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I don’t remember firing the first shot. I was so angry with myself that it almost seemed like another person had done it. All I remember is the loudest sound I’ve ever heard go off right in front of me, then the Model Three getting flung off the mall cop. I stared, disbelieving, at the smoking gun in my shaking hands. Then, realizing what I’d done, I immediately turned the weapon on the second xeno.
No Mesh game had prepared me for the sheer sound and recoil of a real gun, even a small one like this. My first two shots went wide, smashing into a soda fountain next to the door. Even after taking a second to steady my aim, my third shot missed as well, giving the Model Three enough time to finish busting open the door and make its way into the cafeteria.
Not wanting it to get any closer, I gave up on any pretense of accuracy. With a hoarse scream, I emptied the rest of the magazine, hitting it several times before the slide locked back with a final click. The Model Three fell where it stood, letting out a silent whine as it attempted to move. It wasn’t quite dead, but it probably wouldn’t be able to attack me anymore. Good enough.
I looked over at Fatguy, and my heart stopped. The first Antithesis I’d shot hadn’t died from its injuries either, and had apparently decided that I was the better snack.
I don’t know why I expected some demonic snarl or slavering howl—the movies always showed it, even though school taught us that most Antithesis never made noise—but it was completely silent as it charged me. Somehow that was scarier. I knew I would die without a sound, my body’s biomass used to grow some other silent monstrosity in a hive deep underground. With no ammo, I was out of options and out of luck as the alien barreled into me, sinking its razor-sharp teeth into my arm.
I screamed as the pain hit me. I thought it had hurt when my bones had been broken, but this was worse. A dozen pinpricks of white-hot agony burned into my forearm as the Model Three shook its head back and forth, trying to rip my arm off. I was pushed off the side of the chair I had propped myself on, and there was another stab of pain as my leg was forcibly relocated from the fall. The Antithesis let go of my arm, only to chomp back down near my wrist, as if it were trying to get a better grip to rip me limb-from-limb. My mind was hazy again from the pain, and I knew the Model Three wasn’t going to let me go.
It was then that my flailing arm (the good one, not the one currently being used as a chew toy) landed on something. Something small and plastic, and just a tiny little bit sharp. I couldn’t take my eyes off the Model Three, so I just grasped the object and thrust it at the alien’s face.
The first stab glanced off the thin scales on its muzzle, and it merely snorted as it once again repositioned its hold on my arm. I stabbed again, this time hitting it between the teeth, and it let go. However, instead of backing off, the xeno then leapt further up on my body, aiming for my throat. Time seemed to slow down for a second, and I realized that if it got its teeth around my neck, I was dead.
I aimed one last time, then brought the object down again. As it lanced into the Model Three’s eye, I finally realized what the object was: it was the spork! The same traitorous spork that had attempted to choke me to death was now redeeming itself by giving me one last chance at life.
The Antithesis, now missing one eye, missed its grab at my throat, and its head landed next to my own. I stared into its remaining eye, directly below the one I’d just stabbed, and saw nothing there. There was no intelligence in this creature—only a hunger, a need to kill and eat and bring the remains back to whatever hive it called home. I wasn’t going to let it do that to me.
With a tortured cry, I removed the spork from its eye with a wet pop, then stabbed down again, and again, and again. I rolled over and trapped one of its legs underneath me, preventing it from getting up as I continued my assault. At some point the spork snapped in half, leaving me holding a jagged piece of cheap plastic, but I didn’t let that stop me. With a savage animalism to rival the alien I was pinning down, I grabbed the Model Three with my own teeth, tearing into its shoulder as my bloody knuckles beat in its skull. With twin cracks—one from its skull and one from my fist—the alien immediately crumpled. I punched it a few more times for good measure, completely ignoring the pain in my now-broken hand, just to make sure it was dead. Once I was sure, I rolled off it, pushing its body away as I took a few seconds to get my breathing under control.
Bang!
I flinched at the sudden gunshot, but didn’t do anything else. In my current state, I couldn’t so much as turn my head to see who’d fired the shot, or at what. I was too tired to move, so I just continued to stare at the ceiling as I gulped down air..
I tensed as I heard a squish off to my right, then relaxed as Fatguy entered my vision. He was rubbing the food court’s facsimile of chili off his shoe and staring down at me. I knew what I probably looked like to him—my height and thin frame made me look like a sickly beanpole at the best of times, but covered in blood and bruises as I was… I probably looked like death warmed over.
“Hey, you okay?” he asked. I didn’t respond, still coming to grips with what I’d done, so he leaned down and shook my shoulder. I let out a weak mewl as the movement aggravated my injuries, then groaned as he repeated the question.
“I’m going to take that as a ‘yes’,” was all he said in response, and he moved off. He came back into my view, dragging a chair behind him, then put his hands under my shoulders. I gave another cry as he pulled me up, then a sigh as he set me down into the chair. I leaned back as much as my bruises would allow, then tried to speak.
All that came out was a croak, so I cleared my throat and tried again. “Thanks,” was the only thing I managed to get out, but he nodded in understanding.
Fatguy reached down and touched my bloodied arm, which I drew back with a hiss, then nodded to himself again. He withdrew a pouch from his uniform’s cargo pocket, which turned out to be a first-aid kit. He started removing gauze from the kit, then spoke. “Name’s Harry, what’s yours?”
As he said that, I noticed Fatg—Harry had some blood-stained gauze around his own neck, likely with some quick-clotting ointment underneath to cover the teeth wounds. “Benjamin,” I offered in response.
He nodded yet again as he sprayed something on my own wounds and wrapped them. “Well, Benjamin—”
“Just ‘Ben’ works, actually,” I interjected.
“Well then you should have said that from the beginning, eh, Benjamin?” he noted with a hint of amusement in his eyes. Then his expression turned dour. “I won’t lie; we’re in the poop, kid. I’m not sure if you’ve looked outside, but there are Antithesis all around this building, and they’re searching the floors below us. These three were just some advance scouts, and you saw what they did to—” He choked up for a second, gazing back at the remains of his fellow security guard, then looked back at me. “—what they did to Davis. National Guard is still being mobilized from Malmstrom, and I haven’t heard of any Samurai in the area. I’m down to my last magazine, there’s only one shot in my taser, and I don’t have anything else on me that could be used as a weapon—we’re not allowed to carry pocket knives, and we had to stop wearing batons after Kathy got hers stolen by a kid that one time.”
I closed my eyes and let my head fall back as I slumped down in the chair, a sudden mental numbness deadening the new spikes of pain from the motion. “In other words: we’re fucked?”
Harry sighed and shook his head. “There’s nothing chasing us right now, so if you want, I can bring you to the shelter and lock you in with the rest of them until help arrives. But I’m going to stay out here and see if I can keep them away from it. I know the security shed at the back of my store still has a few guns and magazines left.” He looked forlorn as he said it, like he knew it was unlikely he would reach the room before more Antithesis made it to this floor.
I thought about that. An hour ago, I would’ve just let him go and shambled my way to the nearest shelter. Now, however, I wasn’t so sure. I looked over at the dead Antithesis around us—including the one I’d shot by the door, which Harry’d clearly finished putting down while I was otherwise occupied—and considered the sheer state of fucked that I was in. There were thousands more of these kinds of things out there, all looking for people to kill.
People who were just as scared as I was. People who were dying right now, as I faffed around trying to think of something productive to do. I didn’t want to die, but the idea that I could help those people… Well, if Harry could do it, why couldn’t I? Maybe together, we had a better chance of surviving until help arrived. It was probably better than waiting for the Antithesis to break into whatever shelter I hid in, anyways.
I realized that I’d been silent for a while at this point, so I opened my mouth to respond. “I think we should—”
I was rudely interrupted by a prickling shock across my entire body.
System Initialized!
Congratulations. Through your actions, you have proven yourself worthy of becoming one of the Vanguard, a defender of humanity. I am Lynata. I will assist you to uplift humanity so that you may defend your homeworld from the Antithesis threat!
Rise, Benjamin Miller, and become a protector of the weak!
“Oh, I guess I’m a Samurai now,” I said, then immediately slipped out of my chair and collapsed to the floor. I was utterly spent, and so done with this day.