"Vest vest vest!"
This was wrong - all wrong.
Nevermind the fact that the world had been upended a few years ago, millions dead, seasons shifted and history changed forever - now, we had to deal with this shit too.
A dozen weapon mounted flashlights click on, to confirm what our sniper cover had seen through his night vision - it's a man, standing fifty yards from our checkpoint. He had been taking advantage of the darkness afforded by the mandated blackouts, hovering just at the edge of our perimeter lights.
He looks like your typical post-Second Impact refugee: a foreigner, gaunt, yet hardened from years of survival out in whatever Hell was out there. His eyes aren't wild like the hungry ones, which means that this man is here on a mission... one that probably involves the few pounds of homebrew plastic explosives he had hanging off of his body.
Jesus. This is the third one for us today. At least these guys tended to only target our convoys and checkpoints, and it seemed like they had no reason to go after the civilian camps or ration lines.
Yet.
The solution to a man in a suicide vest is simple in theory, but not necessarily in practice. Luckily for us we had gotten quite good at it in the past few months - complete and instantaneous severance of the brain from the rest of the body. At my unit, we call that a "switch," which, unlike a "timer" like the heart, immediately ceases all bodily function when shot properly.
I see the man raise his right hand and start yelling some gibberish in a language that nobody here understands, but by then I've lined up my weapon's holographic sight right on the tip of his nose.
Before I can pull the trigger, his head comes apart as the rest of the checkpoint opens up on him. It isn't like the movies, where the bad guy falls to his knees then slumps to the ground - it's as if his strings are cut, and he becomes deadweight in milliseconds.
"Goddamn, another one?" asks my buddy Jake, safing his weapon and bringing it to a low-ready. He begins waving his other hand, palm-out, signaling to the rest of the guys to cease fire. "Good thing Tommy caught that on NODs. Dude was getting too close for comfort."
Jake reaches down and keys his push-to-talk.
"TOC, Checkpoint-02 - one EKIA on our pos. S-vest on him, requesting EOD."
"Copy 02, we're pushing an EOD team out to you. It might take a minute. The other checkpoints are a little busy at the moment."
"Roger, TOC. It's that time of year."
Jake lets his hand fall from his PTT, and brings it to rest on his rifle. He watches with me as the body of the attempted-suicide bomber begins to start matching the ambient temperature, his life leaking out into a pool around him.
"Five years," says Jake softly. "Five years we've had to deal with this shit."
"Yeah, well, the world ended, y'know?"
I pause, thinking about that day. It was as sudden as it was devastating.
"I remember the talk in the team rooms back then, before it all happened," I say, the smiles of comrades long gone appearing in my mind's eye. These last few years had not been kind to our community, and I missed them dearly. Those were easier times. "Middle East was what everyone was saying. Afghanistan. This sure beats Afghanistan, doesn't it?"
Jake snorts.
"We're killing dudes in suicide vests, outside of a base on American soil. I don't know about that one, dude."
"No sand, no heat, and no plane rides," I reply, shrugging. "I'll take this. Desert deployments sound like shit… What deserts are even left, actually?"
I can see Jake's teeth in the darkness as he cracks a smile.
"You're crazy, man. But at least you won't have to deal with all this for much longer, eh?"
"Unfortunately, you mean," I respond. "They're pushing me out at the end of the week now, along with a few of the guys in A-Squadron. Guess they need the hands."
"NERV, huh..." says Jake. He shakes his head slowly, side to side. "You always wanted to save the world, D. And now you're gonna do just that."
"I kinda imagined chasing down a bad guy with a nuclear football in the middle of Manhattan... and T-zoning his ass. Strong hand-only pistol, twenty-five yards out before he can clack it off," I say, breaking out into a grin of my own. "Playing security for a bunch of UN eggheads... wasn't really in my flowchart. Doesn't sound like much world saving going on in my future."
Jake is quiet for a moment, lost in thought as his smile disappears. Even in the darkness, I can make out his face as he turns to me.
"They say NERV can fix... this. All of this, make the world whole again. It won't bring everyone back, but the ones we've lost in the last five years... I think they make it worth a shot, man, don't you?
"Of course I do. But they don't need Tier-1 assets playing rent-a-cop for them, and for damn sure not this one."
"The fate of the world is in the balance, and you know the US only cares to send the very best." The smile returns to Jake's face. "I think a blue helmet would look great on you!"
I can't help but laugh, and send a middle finger towards Jake. Yeah, looking at it more closely, it's actually real fuckin' funny: The US government spent millions training my mates and me to be the best counter-terrorist operators in the world... and now we were gonna be stuck in a top-secret base in God-knows-where, as the newest goons of the United Nations.
That kinda thing was supposed to be for National Guard guys and POGs. Not us.
Behind us, the gate swings up and we hear the engine of a Humvee as it pulls up and deposits the EOD team. I look behind to see a couple guys in The Bomb Suits hop out, moving slower than usual and stumbling as they hit the ground. They carry their bags of tools and gingerly lift an EOD robot out of the back of their vehicle.
"Evening, gents," says their leader, almost groggily as they walk past. I see him yawn through the full-face helmet as he comes to a stop to survey the body in front of us.
"That makes... twelve since this morning. They always seem to ramp it up around Impact Day, huh?"
His assistant grunts in displeasure and shakes his head.
"Refuge and a roof over their heads aren't good enough for some of these guys. As far as they're concerned, we didn't help them out enough when the world first died. Getting to come over here is just a consolation prize."
He spits in the body's general direction before re-checking the seals on his EOD suit.
"Fuckin' sore losers, I tell ya."
"Look the bright side, dudes," Jake chimes in. "At least we're not bored."
"Wow. Shouldn't you Delta guys be out, y'know... hunting terrorists or some other cool shit? Working a base gate here on Bragg seems to be a bit below you."
"These are the only terrorists we got nowadays," I respond matter-of-factly, " And we're doing our part. On that note you guys should make yourselves useful and start clipping some wires - chop chop!"
The EOD team lead chuckles, and waves his guys forward.
"Yeah, we're on it. Let's go-"
It's faint at first, but Jake stops his own laugh and perks up. Something is approaching in the darkness, the sounds of a diesel engine getting ever closer, but we see no lights. The EOD guys freeze in uncertainty as Tommy calls it over the radio.
"We got a vic, two hundred out, closing fast!"
"Hey, pull back!" I yell, and they start running - or attempting to, with all the weight of their suits- back to our lines. The hum of the engine is slowly rising to a dull roar. Jake and I settle into our rifles, pushing them into the sandbags in front of us, and sight in on the darkness.
"A vehicle?" I ask, as the EOD guys move past us, and into their own. I hear them peel off and retreat further into the base. "Agency said the most we'd get here Stateside were vests. VBIEDs…"
"Easy money," replies Jake. "Just remember where to hold on the windshield and smoke the driver. The fifties will probably get the engine."
"Our force protection still isn't set up for this!"
"We'll manage."
The spotlights click on, mounted to the heavy machine guns above us, illuminating farther past the suicide bomber's dead body. The enemy vehicle crosses into the light at the same time the fifty-cals open up, and my heart sinks into my gut.
It's armored, covered in who-knows-how-many layers of steel plating, its engine struggling under the extra weight but still able to maintain all the speed it would need.
I hear the call on the radio, asking for a rocket launcher, and I start laying into the VBIED anyways, watching as Jake's and my rifle rounds spark off of the welded steel. There must be a lot of plating as the fifties don't seem to be doing much to slow that thing down, either.
I aim for the small slit viewport and try to land my rounds into the unseen driver, as the rolling hunk of death draws closer. Where the fuck is that rocket?
"Looks like your world saving ends right here!" Jake yells, almost laughing. The truck is almost on top of us. He's right. No more blue helmet for me, I guess.
My rifle's bolt locks back on empty with a hollow thunk, and I reach down to my body armor for a fresh magazine. It will probably be the last thing I ever do.
The truck crosses past the body of the dead suicide bomber, fifty yards out, and the last thing I see is-