Sometimes, Jack wondered what his life would have been like had he chosen a different path. For a time, a long time, during college, he considered the priesthood. He'd been raised in the church and, despite being witness to any number of things that could be considered evil, he still held his faith close to his heart.
After college, he'd spent a few years in the army and had been trained as a medic. As a civilian, he'd become an EMT and later a paramedic in New York City. It was hard, sometimes consuming work, but he loved it. All the chaos and adrenaline and sometimes the danger.
It was life.
He re-upped after 9/11 and served two tours in Iraq as a 68W E-8 (in layman's terms, a combat medic with the rank of Master Sergeant). Even the streets in Bed-Stuy seemed quiet after 6 years of that.
Readjusting to civilian life was a bit of a challenge, but he was managing. Things were settling down…and then the V's arrived.
Now, Jack didn't kid himself to think that he had a particularly tactical mind, but he thought the human race, as a whole, should taken a bit more time to consider the aliens before deciding to embrace them with open arms. Nearly ever Hollywood movie depicting the arrival of aliens, in present times, on Earth turned out badly for humans.
Even the church jumped on the bandwagon, and Father Travis, the priest at Jack's parish, was a huge fan of the V's.
And the whole V thing bothered Jack. What was the name of their race? Surely they weren't simply called Visitors on their own world.
Still, if anyone shared his doubts, they were keeping quiet about them…save for the occasional crazy person.
But were they crazy, or were they seeing something everyone else refused to see.
Earlier that day, everything changed.
A routine call out. A guy bleeding out from a knife wound to the abdomen. Almost as soon as he saw the guy, Jack knew he wasn't going to make it to the hospital, but not for lack of trying. He and his partner loaded the injured man into their rig and sped off siren blaring.
In the back, Jack fought to keep the man alive as he fought and raved.
"No one thinks," the man gasped. "I know why they're here. They're going to obliterate us!"
Making an educated guess, Jack asked, "The V's?"
Something like hope flared in the man's eyes, even as his vitals took a nosedive. "Yes! I'm not the only one," he rallied his strength and pulled an envelope from his pocket, pressing it on Jack. "Take this, go to the address and give it to the people there. All the information's inside. Promise me!"
He seemed so desperate that Jack found himself nodding and agreeing. "Okay," he said, accepting the envelope.
"Please," the man had said, fading fast. "It's important."
Jack didn't know exactly what to make of that, but he chose to honor the mans dying wish and found himself in a warehouse, surrounded by a group of people, most of whom seemed no more sure of themselves than he was.
Then everything seemed to happen so fast. They found out that the V's were definitely not what they seemed, and all bore a new scar behind the ear to prove their own, Earth based birth. The envelope turned out to hold pictures of V's that were operating like a sleeper cell on Earth. Everyone seemed to be on the same page, realizing they were now going to have a fight for Humanity on their hands.
Or they would have, had the V's not arrived to slaughter nearly everyone.
After escaping the carnage, Jack sat beside a blond woman, Erica, and he took her hand as she said what they were both thinking.
This was a war. It was time to fight.
Comments, pretty please?