A/N: I'm not quite sure why I wrote this. I was feeling inspired I guess. It's a little…deep in some places, but I'd really like to hear what you think of it. Some information is taken from the novel, but no scenes came directly from there. Well, thanx and enjoy.
I never told my grandchildren the story. Never displayed any medals. Never got any to begin with, but wouldn't have displayed them anyway. I never marched in a parade or went to the local High School to talk about my experiences or the brutality of war of the necessity of supporting our country. I was never in a war, and yet I was a veteran. I never stood to support the freedom of my country, yet I was a defender. I never fought for what I believed in, yet I was a soldier.
But there never was a war, just one man's madness. And I never believed in what I was doing, I was just naive. I was young and impressionable and eager for power and respect. But I can make enough excuses to last ten lifetimes and it still wouldn't be enough. Not enough to take back what I did. Not enough to lift the guilt from my mind, my heart. My soul.
'Mutants' was the subject in every sentence in our debriefing. Never students, or minors, or innocents…,or children.
"Take these," a middle-aged officer told me after our debriefing, shoving a small, plastic package into my hands. A baggie, containing two small, rubber-like spheres. "For your ears. Female on the second floor with a killer voice. Trust me," he chuckled as if full of wisdom and gung-ho attitude, "you'll need 'em."
"Report to barrack C in 1900 hours," I was informed days before our mission was to begin. "You will be fitted for the lining of your uniform."
"But the uniforms are already water sealed," I retorted stupidly.
"Yes, but water sealant will hardly keep out the heat caused by high pressure fireballs. The lining will keep you skin from incinerating."
I should have been terrified, but I was actually looking forward to it. It was a time of peace, not many men saw action in those days. I thought I was one of the lucky ones. I remembering thinking that maybe I was up for some kind of promotion, and this was the test. This was the chance to prove that I could handle combat as well as strategy and history and the rest of the crap learned from books that I had no patience with. I wanted action, I wanted danger, I wanted adventure. What I should've done was gone out and purchased a good Tom Clancy novel. What I did was report to duty.
I took my earplugs.
I had the high-tech flame retardant put into my uniform.
I sold my soul to the devil for a few selfish dreams and a pack of bad lies.
It was time. We assembled, the privates, the nobodies, in the groups we had been assigned to. Not platoons. There weren't enough of us for those. These were just groups. Groups of men, a few women. Some old and withered, some young and green, like myself. Some with friends, with family, children, wives, love. Selected from bases and academies around the country. Brought here to train for six months. To become an elite group. Not like the Green Beret. They we flashy and well known. We lived in shadows and sewers. You never saw our guts, and we only expected hidden glories. But anyway, we gathered. Awaited the orders from our commanding officers. Lt. Lyman approached, led his group away. I heard the hum of rotating Blackhawk blades in the distance, and strained my ears to hear them fade as the first wave went in. More waiting, as nary a peep escaped from the mouths of all those men. My lieutenant appeared next. Lt. Richards, like Lt. Lyman and all the lieutennients here, had been with the General for years. They knew him, the Great General Stryker, as well as each other. His mission was there's. This night would finally justify all their work, their sweat and blood. Their existence. You would've thought they'd be nervous, but no. They were calm as stone. We went.
Side by side in the cramped quarters of the helicopter interior. The smell of sweat was pungent in the air, despite the roaring wind through the open para-trooper doors. But we weren't parachuting in. We were repelling. I was jingling my foot, I remember, because it made the metal clasps on my climbing harness rattle. I wasn't scared exactly, it was just a nervous habit. We were only a bare minute behind the first wave. We had to be ready.
"Remember your briefing, men," Richards bellowed over the roar of the blades above us. "Keep your heads. Remember the safety of the people may depend on our success. Do your country proud, men. Do your duty." You know what happened to me when he said that. I got goose-bumps. It was the kind of speech the soldiers lived for. I was ready to serve my duty, my country. I felt brave and mighty and patriotic all at the same time. No less than two days ago had the President been attacked, now it was my chance to show that you couldn't play that way in the US. I was surprised my heart hadn't burst from pride and love for my country. I didn't see it as genocide then. At that point in time, the last thing I felt like was a nazi. Mutants were like Al Queda, the Ok City bomber, and anyone else who stood in the way of freedom, democracy, and life. They weren't another race, they were just terrorists. And they would die like the rest of those violent sons-of-bitches had. The shout rang out.
"On your feet men! Let's move!" We sprang to our feet, reflexes trained to be lightening fast. I slipped the earplugs in my ear. My hands locked onto the thick cable and I slid
all
the
way
down, till my feet hit the roof with a THUD. More THUDS followed. Then each man broke off. More repelling, only this time it was one man to one window. I locked my cable onto the narrow lip of the roof, and prayed to any Gods out there that may aim was true. I kicked out into the air that night, and streaked downward for what seemed like forever and I was sure that I'd missed my mark. But sure enough…CRASH! Glass exploded everywhere as hit the pane and tumbled to my feet somewhere on the second floor of the building. I heard similar crashes all around me as I strode to the nearest door and thrust it open. Two feminine screams from within heralded my arrival. My gun was already leveled, though, and two swift thrusts of my pointer finger cut both screams short. Two nightclad figures fell to the floor in a heap. I re-cocked my weapon, and loaded in two more tranq. darts. My job here wasn't to kill. My job was to capture retain. But hell, if that was my job, then I'd do it right! Another door, another room, this one empty. I went to move on, but stopped, glancing back inside.
The interior wasn't bizarre. In fact, quite the opposite. It was normal as vanilla ice cream. The walls were blue, and covered in posters of the Boston Red Sox, The White Stripes, and the 2000 Olympic Snowboarding team. There was a bed, clothes strewn on the floor. A desk, with a picture frame on it. Four kids, two boys, two girls, all young. The glass was shattered. I got a sick feeling in the pit of my stomach.
The ear piece we had all been equipped with crackled to life.
"We got trouble in the north wing, first floor. Hostile assailant has our men trapped. Three men down, two not responding. I repeat…" The queasy feeling vanished as I abandon the room and headed down the hallway. We'd all been well prepped in the layout of the large estate, and I had a lot of ground to cover to get to the north wing. Running, I took the first staircase that I saw. Blood stained the walls. 'Blood?' I had a moment to wonder, when suddenly I was there. The first floor was the exact opposite of the second. There were screams and shouts and…gunfire? Two dark shapes darted in front of me. I raised my weapon when one of them turned. I was taking aim, when I was thrown backwards, blinded by a series of loud explosions and colorful sparks. By the time I got to my feet, the pair was gone. My earpiece was gone as well. Dazed and confused, I wandered aimlessly for I'm not sure how long. I was seeing fewer and fewer people, and the screams were getting less and less frequent. But what I saw on my wandering was worse. Bullet holes were ripped into walls and furniture. Red footprints covered the ground. Then I turned the corner.
I was in the wrong part of the house. Way wrong. What I had found wasn't the north wing, it was the kitchen…and three of my men lying dead. Stabbed through the heart with what looked like a giant, three-pronged fork. There was…so much….I couldn't keep it down. I turned around and lost it. I was violently sick, sicker than I ever remember being. I'd always thought that, in the heat of battle, I'd be strong. I was wrong. I learned that in the heat of battle no one is strong. No one is brave. No one lives for the glory, because in the heat of battle, all you want is an end. That's why this battle had turned from capture to kill. Because the other side wanted an end as well. They wanted to live, we wanted to stop them from living. Two goals, no means. I crawled from the room on shaking knees, and rose to my feet with the help of the doorframe. I walked slowly down the hall, gun clutched in one shaky hand, the other helping me stay upright. Turned the corner into the first room I saw. It was a library. It was the place he'd chosen to hide.
He was a boy, couldn't have been more than ten. He was huddled under a table, cradling a right arm which was bleeding profusely, but when he saw me he emerged from hiding. I'm not sure why exactly. He turned to face me, and I saw the thin, black scale-like pattern that covered his arms a neck. He was a mutant…he was a child. Like the kids in the picture upstairs…and whoever lived in that room…and the two girls who never finished screaming…
The child, for that's all he was, looked at me with his massive, green eyes. He saw me and I saw him, and for one brief moment, our eyes locked and the world stopped. And I saw, in those innocent eyes, acceptance of the fate I was going to commit him to. I saw a past that held only the pain of difference and separation, and a future that held more of the same. But for the present, his present, I saw one brief, shining moment of light and joy and acceptance. For that one brief second, I felt that he was my child, and that the peace he had discovered at the school, this school, was part of me as well. I let the metal slip from my fingers. I didn't have the strength or the will to tote it anymore.
'An end…All we look for is an end,' I remember thinking as the gun, my gun fell to the floor with a clatter. I stared at it, dumbfounded for a moment, until I heard a shot ring out.
That was it. The silent bubble burst and time started again…and my young companion hit the floor. His eyes were still open wide as the life fled from his body. As the blood seeped into the floorboards beneath him. Dead, undeniably, he still saw everything. The pain around him. The chaos of destruction. And the speed at which Corman, my comrade approached me as he lowered his still smoldering gun to his side.
"Judson! You alright? What happened back there?" he demanded, giving me a once over to see that I wasn't hurt, as if there could be no other explanation for dropping my weapon. His voice sounded distant and far away, like he was shouting from the opposite end of a subway tunnel. I found that my own eyes were drifting around unfocused, and my vision was blurry. But I could see well enough to identify the full pack of tranquilizer darts clipped to Corman's belt.
"Judson, what the hell. Get your weapon and get moving. We still got boys in trouble by the main entranceway." Corman was shouting over his shoulder to me as he ran back down the hall, fingering his ear piece, and giving the young boy's body a swift kick as he flew by. My hand retrieved the gun from the floor, slowly and by instinct only. I was no longer in control of my body. I was no longer there.
Corman had made it twenty yards down the hallway.
I felt the cool gunmetal come into contact with the bar flesh of my hand.
Twenty five.
I brought my trigger hand up, level with my chest.
Thirty.
I raised the revolver.
He had reached the split in the hallways.
I pulled the trigger.
"An end…"
Corman fell, lost somewhere between the left path…and the right one. He never got to help out our boys in the entranceway. They all died at the hands of the only full grown male inhabitant of the house. He also never got to shoot another kid. The rest all made it out alive somehow. And I never had to watch another man ,or child, fall.
I left that night. Just left. I walked to the nearest door, into the woods on the outside of the property, and never turned back. I went back home, never spoke of the incident, of Corman, or the mutant kid with bright green eyes. My own son had bright green eyes. His daughter does now too. My wife had brown eyes, but when she died, I closed hers. She didn't have to lay there with them open so she could watch her own blood flow into the floorboards. Her blood didn't flow, that was the problem. She died of a blood clot in her left aorta. And me, well I'm still alive and I still remember.
The blood washed off my hands after that night. The bodies disappeared through some means or another. The students returned. The survivors moved on. The world covered up what happened that night under a layer of lies and scar tissue. And I tried to heal. But each night in my dreams the blood still clings, and the bodies litter the floor. Children scream through the darkness and flee in terror as gunfire resounds through the night. And there is no good or bad, no right or wrong. Only madness and the will to survive and pain and terror. Every day I get up and go to work, see the grandchildren, take a walk. Anything to distract myself. But at night I can never hide from the memories that I wish were dreams, and I can't erase the past, which I wish was still a changeable future.
A/N: Now go review, cause I want to know if this was decent or a crappy waste of my time