Merciful Damnation
1 month later - September 2076
Behind the mask of "Happiness" or "Ease" LM-5 gave me, I belonged elsewhere. God/The Universe/Karma or whatever placed a cruel twist of fate on me. Perhaps it was good in the long run, but it left me begging for mercy, praying to Gods I wasn't sure existed, and absolutely terrified about my future. I accepted death in Montréal a long time ago, and LM-5 brought back some of my innocence in a dull if not unique way. At the time, I didn't know if death would've been a good thing, or if the peace brought upon me was truly worth it given what happened in the very end. I know the peace was worth it in hindsight, but I'd long been awaiting my future even though I didn't know it at the time... I hope that makes sense, I promise I'm still sane... I just don't know how to explain what happened or how it related to where I ended up.
So, home was the place I longed for bitterly until my merciful judgment. Even when I was lost in the day to day of monotony and boredom or even beauty around LM-5, my heart still remembered home. Although, the years in Montreal threw out any notion of actually getting home, and that mindset stuck with me every day I was at LM-5. I'd long accepted how I would never get back there, and despite everything that would happen to me, I knew that even if I somehow made it, I'd never Truly be there again. I said it before and I'll say it again, "Montreal never leaves", just like the image of Savannah forever in my mind, I knew I'd be forever haunted. With Savannah being my haunting image of beauty and innocence, the years in Montreal would forever haunt me as the embodiment of cruelty and horror. Regardless of the drugs I was still taking, the two images were still the makeup of my mind.
So, what about my physical body? My injuries in Montréal wouldn't help me earlier; since I accepted where my mind would forever be, my heart still wanted to get home. I'd spent many nights, especially at LM-5 seriously but numbly wondering how I'd be released from the trap of world conflict I signed up for years ago. Even though I shrugged those thoughts off, knowing their implausibility, I wondered exactly what would happen to me in the weeks, months, years, or however long it would take for the present to catch up to the future... Either way, the thoughts were irrelevant to what was in store, and here's how I found out my fate:
It was not through an act of heroism or a miraculous ending to the war, and it didn't take weeks, months, or years for the event to occur. The lead up could've been my entire life, but the results of a mere couple of minutes ended somewhat beneficially by pure luck. Pure misfortunate luck.
The day was like any other towards the start of fall. The leaves were becoming orange, the snow still topped the distant mountains, and the saw building was working as usual in the midday. I was posted on the roof of the processing building and watching over the gate. Nothing I hadn't already explained was taking place. While daydreaming, a few guys on my crew were listening to the radio conversation between the Intel Conflicts host and the brother of the RobCo CEO. Apparently, the brother of Robert E. House was convinced that his more successful adopted brother was trying to buy out his tool company and convert a Vegas casino into a giant life extension device that also controls a secret robot army... Just the usual creative nonsense, I tuned out to watch over the yard.
The workers went about their business and I stood atop the roof with the eight other guys passing the time in typical ways. I didn't know too many of them since they were mostly from Reed's platoon. So, taking in that same pretty view, I got tired of it having admired it for the millionth time. Looking down at the yard, the workers were doing their thing in preparing early for the off-season. The wind was cool, the air was perfect, and the world was so serene.
Life at LM-5 was the same as usual; it was just any other day. That same day, I read in the newspaper that General Constantine Chase was going to give a speech in Juneau. General Chase's motivational speech was to inspire the soldiers who were making the push to Anchorage every day. So, lots of us were somewhat excited to listen to the radio broadcast later and give our own colorful commentary. Everyone knew he was really a desk general. There's no way that guy in his fancy white coat was actually in the Anchorage trenches with his boys or anywhere near a frontline camp. He was safe in the comfort of Juneau making false promises to his guys just so the press could make him seem like the grand commander he said he was. He gets credit for how close we are to Anchorage, but he promised to have his men home by Christmas time. He's made that promise every year since the reds landed in 2066.
Anyway, I resumed my watch over the courtyard and took in a familiar sight near the gate to the facility with a group talking in front. The guard tower next to the gate housed four troops, and the rooftops of the buildings were speckled with sentries desperately trying to combat the regular issues and likely counting the seconds till the end of shift or planning day trips. I focused my attention on the group of people by the gate. Three soldiers from the courtyard crew and I think Cpt. Mosby were talking to some workers since we weren't expecting any convoys. Things were busy in that regard a month back when many troops were coming down from the Yukon to join the Anchorage advance, but not anymore. If LM-5 wasn't that necessary during the Wilderness Campaign, we most certainly weren't necessary after Fairbanks fell. So, focusing back on the little gaggle of troops and workers, I did my normal thing where I would pretend I was part of the conversation and make up what they were talking about. Not more than a minute later, everything went south.
I only looked away from the group when I noticed a flock of birds fly up from the forest on the other side of the highway beyond the gate. Not thinking much of it, I looked back at the group, and when I did, each person in it was dropping to the ground while blood drained from their necks. Being the only one to notice that, I yelled out louder than I have ever done before, "GET DOWN!" I caught glimpse of every sentry on every rooftop turn to me, but not more than a millisecond later, the calm of LM-5 was officially ended by the thunder of guns that none of us had heard in years.
I dropped down behind the half wall while the world fell apart and a hundred bullets whistled over my head or pelted the rooftop barricades. I sat there gasping for breath while being deafened by the guns returning fire. I looked around the roof, everyone was intact and blindly firing in the direction our cover was being hit from. Nobody was ready, and the faces of men who'd seen the worst of Montreal had looks of terror unable to be concealed by a gas mask... It was strange for the moment, but I remember wondering if that expression was on all their faces during our time on those atrocious streets. Perhaps they were all terrified, myself included when the guns were cracking and nobody could tell since nobody had a face in that city. The whole crew looked to me for answers I couldn't give, asking "How could this be happening here?!"
Returning to reality, I scooted along the half-wall, and when I reached an AC unit, I stood up to steal a look from behind it. The entire courtyard was being shot up; the men inside the buildings burst out the windows and began firing into the forest. The workers fled in different directions, and an endless spree of flashes came out across the entire tree line. Our guys were dropping left and right, scrambling to get behind cover, with many of them failing. I put off a few rounds and got back behind the AC unit.
I breathed heavily; I hadn't been in a firefight in almost three years. The feeling of being under fire I used to love was completely terrifying, but with the numbing drugs, the feeling was more confusing. The gap in logic from eternal serenity to instant Hell on earth asked that same question the sentries' faces did, "How could this be happening here?!"
When I peered out again, the enemy was charging from the tree line while the endless spree of flashes never ceased. There were so fucking many. Us on the rooftops shot back and dropped maybe a few when a missile flew out of the trees and blew up the survivors in the guard tower. I held my helmet to my head and strapped it in place, feeling the building rumble as a series of missiles pelted it. I leaned over the side and shot a man trying to join a stack of hostiles along the entrance to the saw building.
Then, I was hit. I was hit really hard. A bullet pierced my pelvis that was exposed just above the half wall, and I fell over onto the floor next to the AC unit. It hurt so bad; it was unlike any other pain I received in Montreal. I really wished those drugs numbed physical pain because I would've preferred mental torture over the feeling of a bullet-shattered pelvis any day.
The guys next to me on the roof continued to blindly fire at the enemy who was beginning to overwhelm each building one by one. Unable to think or even react to the pain in a way other than shouting and spastically moving my arms, one of the guys thankfully noticed me flailing in pain. Noticing me between a mag dump and reload, the man crawled over to me. He pulled a syringe out of his med-pack within a second and drove the needle right into the bullet hole. I shouted in agony, he got really close to me, and yelled over the gunfire, "IT'S THAT PSYCHO SHIT!"
Why he decided to give me that instead of the Med-X we all had, I don't know. This hardly seemed like the time to experiment with drugs when we all knew Med-X was the best thing for numbing a bullet wound. Although, given the shattered pelvis and site of injection, I wasn't considering those things at the moment. All I can say is what happened.
My pain almost totally disappeared within a few seconds as I felt the militarized antithesis to our brain-numbing drug flow through my veins. What a unique experience that was. The feeling of being mentally numb while transitioning to the psychotic bloodthirsty murder I used to be was completely bizarre. It was like the years in Montreal to achieve psychosis were happening by the second as bullets crashed into the cover we were behind. Couple that feeling with the immovable legs from my physical injury and the slow blood loss, and I felt like a chained-up behemoth that wanted to kill everything but simply couldn't... I almost wanted to cry, not knowing how to feel about anything but getting more and more thirsty for blood.
All while this transition was happening to me, we held onto the roof for a few more minutes, but then we heard three loud BOOMs. The explosions didn't sound like missiles, but more like door charges. Attention shifting with each crack of a bullet, one guy next to me got on the radio and screamed into it, "TASK FORCE STEEL, THIS IS LIMA MIKE- FIFE. REPORTING HEAVY LOSSES -NEED ASSISTANCE- OVER!" I couldn't hear the reply over the howl of gunfire and growing mental turmoil.
This unknown enemy still had us pinned down on the roof while doing who knew what to the rest of the company across the mill. Shortly after the door charge explosions, three more missiles rocked the building while a firefight ensued below us. We could hear the automatic guns popping off below our feet, and then I strangely started thinking, "Where are my friends!?" We were all assigned different posts, so my worry about them increased more and more while the shots were popping off below us and the drug worked through my system.
The "Psycho" drug, was still steadily taking me over as I got angrier and angrier while the pain of my shattered pelvis continually disappeared. Through the drug-induced blood rage and immobility, I managed to pray that my friends were okay. Strangely, during the mixture of fear, rage, adrenaline, numbness, and Psycho-derived craziness, I thought of Savannah again for the briefest of moments. Despite everything I was feeling and everything happening around me, I realized that this was likely to be my final hour on earth, and I was never going to see her again.
"How could this all end so suddenly?"
As soon as I had that thought, the soldier who gave me the Psycho took a look over the edge and was instantly shot right in the head. He fell onto my leg, and his head drained blood all over my pants. He was hit in the forehead just below the helmet, and the bullet broke the back of his skull. The mess was all over me, and I could see the side of his face. Again recalling everything I'd gone through in my craziness and inability to physically move from my position, it was something else to see death in Montréal because every face was covered by a mask. It was fairly easy to look at your dead fellow serviceman when they were just one mask in a sea of others, but the look on that man's face was contorted even more than before, asking the same exact thing even in death, "How could this be happening here?!" Through the mix of drugs and spiraling emotions, that first thought since the start of the gunfight never left. With everything that happened in the few minutes of war around me, I couldn't believe that in this place where the air was breathable and everything was wonderful if not boring, that something like this could happen to someone whose face was clean and grinning only minutes before… I moved his head aside and looked at my hands which were covered in the poor soul's blood. I picked up my rifle and fired a few shots over the edge blindly, unable to see or even care what I was shooting at.
Vision blurred and feeling the vibration of each bullet aimed at the cover dividing me from death, I refocused straight ahead to the rooftop entrance. All of a sudden that door swung open and three of our guys came running onto the roof. Before they could clear the doorway, they were all hit and fell over dead. A roof sentry sprung over to the door and slammed it shut. As soon as the latch was in place, the entire door exploded, sending the sentry's arm over the edge, and flipping my weapon out of my hands. Immediately afterwards five enemy soldiers came onto the roof through the smoke with guns blazing. The other men shot them up while they all tried to pile through the entrance, joining the bodies of those killed three. Soon enough, ten more enemies came filing through, and upon emerging from the smoke, came clearly into view.
They were Chinese soldiers.
The sentries shot who they could, but their weapons were running dry, and they soon found themselves in a brawl. I sat there with my back up against the wall struggling for consciousness as the blood from my injury pooled more and more around where I sat. Drifting in and out of focus, still salivating for blood, and completely immobile from the waist down, one of the reds ran towards me with his bayonet. The shock, horror, and rage made me draw the 10mm from my leg holster and I shot him through the chest five times. Another Chinaman saw what I did and shot me in the chest with his assault rifle causing me to blackout for a single second. Awaking, I felt my ribs break at the impact on my chest plate in slow motion, only to see him a few steps closer before he shot me again in the leg.
I sat there drifting in and out, unable to feel anything in my leg or chest, but knowing I was dead in almost every identifiable way. Slowly raising my head from all the mortal injuries I had but was unable to feel, I examined my Grim Reaper with murder in my eyes. All those years of psychosis, murder, and horror had finally caught up to me, and I had finally returned to the embodiment of hatred I thought I recovered from. I thought of my beautiful Savannah one more time standing beside the executioner I deserved to face but still fucking hated, examining him. He wore a tattered green jumpsuit with a leather ammunition harness bedecked in pouches with a dirt-smeared communist flag above his left breast. Even with the life still pooling around me, I felt that psychotic grin I used to feel in Montreal slowly creep its way across my face as I looked down the barrel of his busted-up assault rifle. Examining the tip of the rusty bayonet inches from my face, I had been long awaiting that very moment.
With the world almost halted at this point, I knew it was going to be a quick death, but mentally and crazily begged for it to be the slow death I always wanted in my corrupted heart, and he granted my wish. In one second, the reaper put one slash across my chest just above my plate. I looked up at him after nearly chuckling at the pain I wasn't able to feel anymore and stared him in the eye. Ready for that final bullet to the brain, the reaper instead whacked me across the face with his rifle, and everything went black.
Damnation
There it was… Heaven. Or most likely Hell. I knew it was probably Hell for all I knew and done, but all I could see was simply white. It was like I was nowhere at all, the edge of the universe. I couldn't see anything but whiteness and myself. I looked down at my hands; they were still covered in dry and fresh blood of myself and the man who injected me with Psycho. I felt fine, but I could see the bullet holes in my armor, and the entry-wound for the round that shattered my pelvis. It wasn't bleeding anymore, but the bottoms of my COFs were still wet and covered in the blood the gunshot caused. After examining myself and before I could think, I heard something. I was silent, but then I heard very faint voices in the distance.
Without even thinking about it, I got down on my hands and knees, and listened to the indistinct voices. Two men were talking about things I couldn't understand. I still picked up the odd sentence or comment like;
"Should he die?"
The other voice responded, "Yes he should, for what he has done."
Then the first voice said, "What about his life, does that mean anything? Heaven? Hell? Live? Die?"
The voices went really muffled for a time and I was scared. I didn't know what they were talking about. Was I dead? Or was this a dream? Then, my thoughts were interrupted when one of them said, "Always a way to redemption."
"As if he deserves that."
The voices went even more muffled and the only words I caught were, "Maybe… Live… Redemption… Never… Die… Love… Loss… Millennia... Sorrows."
A bright shining light obscured even my view of my body, and I awoke...
I'm going to stop taking my meds for the rest of this... I don't think I need them anymore.