October 4th, 1997
Local Time 9:15 AM
The FEMA camp, and town for that matter, was essentially lost. It was hell, quite literally.
People manically ran to and fro in different directions, some being cut down or cut to pieces by mini-gun fire from the hovering Blackhawk chopper. Toddlers escaped from the nursery (their caregivers incapacitated) wandered the streets crying, confused, and ignorant of the danger, and quickly joining the ranks of the dead.
The Red Cross tent, housing the ill and injured clinging to life, was blown open, collapsed, and still blazing. Screams of adults and children, especially newborns, rang through the air over there, the ones not yet suffocated by the black smoke.
One of the escorting drones had smashed in a last-ditch kamikaze move into the command tent, one of its twin Vertical Take-Off and Land (VTOL) engines rammed through a collapsed generator.
In the middle of the town square, landing zone for the supply choppers, was littered with bloody pieces of refugees, part of an enthusiastic welcome wagon chopped to pieces by the mini-gun of a door gunner. Not far from the bloody pile of entrails and extremities was the steaming shape of a crashed Blackhawk, the unlucky one of the pair crippled by a lucky grenade shot from Sergeant Candy. This did not halt the attack, however.
Currently, the three remaining drones had branched from each other and were moving over the streets. They fired rockets at clumps of survivors, while the surviving Blackhawk rained powerful hellfire down on scattered individuals still fleeing.
In the midst of this, Candy distracted his Army counterpart, Belew, by sending him to the Red Cross tent, against the unlikelihood of saving any viable survivors. Meanwhile, Candy would distract himself with a different rescue.
He half-crept, half-stormed over to the crashed Blackhawk, resting at an angle, its blades ripped off by centrifugal force. He paused a few meters from the craft, watching for any fire from a crew member. Instead, a single member awkwardly clambered out, still dazed from the crash. Candy took advantage of the man's state to run up and slam him against the metal shell.
"Who the hell are you?" He demanded, channeling his outrage and shock.
The man was out of breath, and disoriented. "Captain…Eric…Kowalski, US…Army."
"Bull shit you're Army! Why are you firing on us?"
Kowalski coughed and mumbled something.
Candy, a powerfully-built man, threw more of his weight into a punch that he landed right next to the man's head, to break him out of his shell shock. "Answer me, God damn it!"
Kowalski looked directly at him, wide-eyed. "Orders." There was fear in those wide eyes, but it was not fear of Candy's fist.
Candy faltered for a second, then tightened his fist again, raising it as a renewed threat. "Orders from who?"
"Computer. God damn computer. Hooked into everything, controlling everything."
Candy stared at him in confusion, lowering his fist. "What the hell do you mean?"
Before Kowalski could answer, a blast erupted near them, a parked car hit by a rocket. Both men were thrown to the side by the explosion.
As Candy coughed and tried to rub the dust from his eyes with his sleeve, he looked for Kowalski. The poor bastard was impaled on the tail rotor of the Blackhawk.
A irrational desperation overtook Candy. He grabbed the dying man by the collar. "Who gave the orders?" He demanded, as if expecting a different answer.
The Army captain sputtered a single word with a cough of blood. "Machines…"
Candy shook his collar, like a dog giving a death shake on a stuffed toy. "What do you mean, machines?"
Kowalski stopped coughing and lay slack.
Stuck in shock, Candy barely noticed the blasts and gunfire in the background. After a moment, he realized he could no longer hear the defensive staccato of the M-16s, silenced by the mini-guns and rockets.
Candy knew that Camp Lone Star 12 was now another red pin on a map in someone else's command tent, and it was only a matter of time before that tent was also obliterated.