The Sleeping Aphrodite

We marched in a straight line towards our objective; that being the eastern end of Free New York where Maria Louise believes the Yeerks will be advancing. The Queen Reagent covered the front, while Zar held up the back; leaving the pathetic specimen known as David Matherson to be sandwiched between the Nympho-Warrior and the nine foot pacifist alien. I wasn't very keen on Maria Louise's decision to walk in silence. What I needed most was a discussion to take part in; anything really, as long as it took my mind off of the dozens of Hork-Bajir and Taxxons that awaited our arrival at the other side of the city. And when I did make an attempt to start a conversation, I was yelled at and ordered to keep my mouth shut; lest I give our position away to the enemy. I didn't bother to point out that the enemy was on the other side of Free New York, or that, even if the enemy had heard us, it would have been the Queen Reagent's shouting, not my questioning, that would have given away our position. I also tried to sing along to some of the Ramones' many tunes in my head, but my anxiety over the oncoming battle was a continuous distraction. I couldn't even get through She's the One, and that is one of the groups simpler compositions. By then, I had tried to keep myself busy by taking a look at my surroundings.

When the Yeerks declared war and finally made their presence on Earth known, large cities like New York, Toronto, London, Paris—any city with major monuments, really— became primary targets; and monuments like the Eifel Tower and the Statue of Liberty became known strongholds for the Yeerk Empire. Other buildings, like the CN Tower had been levelled as a sign of the complete might of the Empire. Then, the Yeerks took advantage of this mass destruction of the planet's greatest architectural achievements to build their own; the most famous of these "Post-mankind" buildings is the Tower Kandrona, which had replaced Toronto's CN Tower as the city's main monument during the Year Three of the War. And America—or, rather, those few free Americans— wept as a high ranking Visser evicted the reigning president from his home in Washington and declared the White House as another stronghold of the Empire. Those few monuments that had remained intact, and had not become a base of operation for those parasitic demons, were the few that the Yeerks found particular interest in; these became something like archaeological sites. For some reason, the Yeerks have an odd obsession with the Pyramids of Egypt.

I no longer felt a attachment to this strange place, formerly known as New York. When I signed up as a member of the Resistance, I had been asked to as where I would prefer to be stationed. I had been born and raised in NYC—the Big Apple—so naturally I chose to be stationed back home.

But home had been destroyed years ago, long before this awful war had begun. I got to an age where I was not so impressionable where my parent's religious affiliations had been concerned, and I was frequently getting into fights with my father about his devout Catholic Values; and fighting became all the more frequent when I had begun to show interest in joining the Lutheran faith. Though Lutheranism is not nearly as glamorous, or visually appealing as that of Catholicism, and while it lacked the depressing images that the Romanticists had been so hung up about, the religion did appeal to me. It focused more on the teachings of God and Christ present in the Bible, and less on ritual; which the Catholics got a good kick out of. The ritual and mysticism of Catholicism didn't really appeal to the Protestants, and it sure didn't have much of an effect on me; I must stress that my parents used these dark images of death and Apocalypse to scare me into obeying God. I did not want to be frightened into serving my God, so the Protestants—who taught, rather than told— gave me a more positive alternative.

However, I never did convert to Lutheranism, despite my many efforts. Like Martin Luther himself, the Lutherans were happy to welcome me into the Church—as long as I had been quite sure of my decision to convert. My parents, however, with their pouting and sulking, and their constant threats to disown me, was enough to convince me to stay with the Original Church. My father had given me the silent treatment and ceased to pay for his half of my tuition—and agreement we had settled while I was a senior in high school— though I was not extremely troubled by this; I already had a steady job in Toronto. It had been my mother's dying wish that I would stay with the Catholic faith. So I was coerced by the very woman who bore me; who had been dying of lymphoma and simply desired that her beloved son did what she asked. So, I obeyed my mother, even after she had died. I never did go back to New York; having nothing left to say to my devout father, and having already built a life of my own in Toronto. I promised my mother hat I would never become a Protestant. But she had never made restrictions against becoming a Canadian.

After I had graduated from University, with a major in English and two minors in History and Religion, I applied for my Canadian citizenship papers. My flare for politics and my love for history was all that I need to pass; and pass I did. I had become a reluctant Catholic-Canadian, while remaining true to Honest Abe and the Land of the Free. If my father hadn't disowned me by then, he definitely did so after receiving the letter informing him of this great news. My father, to his dying day, remained convinced that the Canadians had brainwashed his son, and so forbade any piece of Canadian literature, film or music from entering his home.

While I had planned on living in Canada, the War brought me back to New York. If I am perfectly honest with myself, I guess I was hoping that returning to New York would allow me to make amends with the way I had left things off with my parents. But I had been wrong. I felt like an alien in my own home. Whatever ties I once had to New York had been severed long ago.

As I looked around myself, during our long and nerve wracking journey through the East end of Free New York, I became increasingly aware of how much the city had changed. I guess the battle that I would eventually be fighting in allowed me to come to this sudden realization. The city looked like Beirut during the 1975 Lebanese War; torn streets from Dracon beam fire that had been so similar to the shells that left millions of Lebanese homeless until the War's close. The towers and office buildings that I once admired as a child lay in rubble; constant symbols of the implications that war has on society.

I could hear the sound of Dracon beam fire in the distance, followed by the sound of returning gun fire. The sound of the Dracon beam, very much like a striking bird of prey, had always left my ears ringing, my gut churning, my fists clenching, and my mind racing. There was no way in hell that the bullets of an AK-47 would be a match for the sure power of Yeerk technology; I would bet my life on it.

"Alright boys," Maria Louise said, grinning wildly. "Check your weapons. We are about fifty feet away from those miserable parasitic fucks"— the woman had a tendency to cuss when she was excited.

There weren't nearly as many controllers as Dax and Zar initially suggested; perhaps a dozen give or take a few. I didn't care if it had been two dozen or two—I was still scared shitless. These Yeerks were not only armed, but they had been armed for a single reason: to kill! And I was the sorry son-of-a-bitch that would be on the receiving end of one of those Dracon beams. There were approximately six Hork-Bajir, three Taxxons, and three human controllers present on the battlefield. I could see Fletcher and Dax fighting off two Hork Bajir, while two other Hork-Bajir—no doubt the Bates twins posing as doppelgangers to Dax and Zar—were fending off a Hork-Bajir, a Taxxon, and a human.

I also noticed four people that I had never seen before fighting alongside members of my own unit. I had heard that there were other sections of the Resistance occupying Free New York, but I had never seen another unit now. Unlike my group, these newcomers did not have any Hork-Bajir to back them up; just four fully capable individuals from different races. Even without the Hork-Bajir, these guys held their own. I was watching, completely impressed, as a black man, who I took as the leader of the four, successfully killed a Taxxon with a machine gun! He didn't cheer, nor did he cry for what he had done. He wasn't a hero. He was solider. He had a job, knew that such a job had to be done, and acted accordingly.

"Matherson!" Maria Louise barked into my ear. I didn't notice that she had been shaking me. "Get ready, boy! Do you want to die?"

I sure as hell didn't want that. I checked my AK-47 and the few grenades that I had strapped to my belt. Technically, I was ready. In reality, however, I was just another child, who believed that he had what it took to fight in a man's war.

Hey, oh, let's go!

Maria Louise, like some sort of hungry dog, ran at the enemy with her AK-47 held high in the air, and letting out an ear curdling battle cry for every living soul to hear. Zar followed our leader reluctantly, unarmed. I took up the rear, hoping that the remaining controllers would drop to the floor at the instant of my arrival. I did something that I had frequently done since this war began; I prayed.

I caught a glimpse of one member of the other Resistance, a petite Asian woman dressed in white, falling to the war torn concrete beneath her feet after being hit in the breast by a Dracon beam. A rather handsome looking man, no older than twenty, had seen this and began to morph into a large, gray creature; a rhinoceros. He charged, letting out a savage groan, and killed the controller that had murdered his partner.

Two more humans started to morph: the black soldier became a beautiful golden Lion, while Maria Louise had morphed into a Grizzly. I had never seen so much morphing taken place in a single area, and I soon found that Fletcher and I were the sole warriors that remained human.

Then, one of the six Hork-Bajir controllers started walking, menacingly towards the area where I had been standing. "Fuck!" I groaned, taking open fire on the advancing alien. The bullet met with the creature's blade. "Fuck!" I swore, taken a second shot at the creature; it pierced the beast's flesh, but made little damage. "Fuck! Fuck!" I roared. I must have fired every single bullet from the gun's magazine, but the fucker still came at me. My last resort would be to smack the damn alien with my own gun.

"Human…" the Hork-Bajir controller said in a gravelly voice. "Got you!" he laughed, grabbing the scruff of my neck as I turned to run away. "You would leave your own people to die at our hands?"

"Fuck you!" I spat.

"I never understood that term," he said, with what I took to be a grin. "The humans scream that one phrase in the Pools more so than any other in the entirety of your race's pathetic language…oh well." He raised his wrist, and inched his host's wrist blade towards my neck.

Tseeeeeeeew.

The Hork-Bajir controller no longer had a head! I fell from the grip of the decapitated alien's remains as the corpse fell over. Behind the dead Hork-Bajir had been the last person that I expected to have saved me; posed like some sort of action hero, left arm raised and grasping a Dracon beam, was Officer Zane Leeds.

"I am very glad that I left Maria Louise in charge," he said with a laugh. He threw his Dracon beam towards me. "Let's hope that you are more effective with this than the AK-47."

He turned away from me and morphed into the mightiest of all creatures, a polar bear.

((Matherson, where is your head at?)) A Grizzly bear had suddenly crouched beside me; Maria Louise. ((We need you out there, boy. Are you with us?)).

I nodded, without being the least bit honest. I ran to help Dax and Zar, and the Bates twins. They didn't need my help—hell, they had almost taken down the Hork-Bajir they had been fighting. But I didn't want Leeds or the Queen Reagent to notice that I was a coward. I also knew that if I had any hope for cover, it was behind four, full grown Hork-Bajir.

The battle had ended with the death of a female controller. I didn't know her name, but she looked like the most beautiful girl that I had ever seen in my life. She couldn't have been much older than eighteen, and now she would never live to see another year of life. I don't know who had killed her, and I honestly couldn't care less. Her body, beautiful even in death, disturbed me. She just seemed…so natural lying there; having died from the most unnatural of causes—War. How could this have happened? How could Aphrodite have died? I mean, weren't the gods supposed to be immortal?

What's worse is that, even after I had turned my back on that beautiful girl, I couldn't shake the image out of my head. She looked the way my mother had looked when she had died—she looked almost as if she had been asleep.

I spent the better part of an hour observing the battlefield. Once upon a time it had been New York City, the Big Apple. Now, the city that had once been my home was a mass gravesite for the rotting flesh of humans, Hork-Bajir, Taxxons, and animals. A rhinoceros lay dead to my left and, beside it, the remains of a Taxxon.

"Come on Matherson," Leeds had said, placing a hand on my left shoulder. "You can't help them where they are."

When the storm's at your front door

With a roar you can't ignore

Yea run, run away

But there's no place to hide mate.

—Billy Talent, Turn Your Back