The sound of the alarm and the subsequent pounding on my door shook me from my sleep. As I sat up and turned towards it with a startled look on my face the sergeant slammed it open. He was a corpulent man who loomed over me in the darkness; the alarm's white and red light casting a shadow of his silluette on me. "Get the fuck up, you have twenty seconds.", he moved on to the next door in the barracks as I hurridly put on my BDU´s and reached for my I.D.
We formed up outside of the barracks expecting it to be a drill or some piece of shit time trial again, but were faced with the grim reality the instant we looked towards the airfield. Dozens of people all came shambling, running, or crawling towards us. They all screamed in pain, they all spoke, they were all familiar......
Our airfield was near a small town, many of us were actually from the city nearby, but a few of the people in my unit grew up in it. The sergeant started handing us our rifles, our Hkg36 carbines, each with two magazines, full. "Set to semi-automatic" he said in a monotone voice as the entire unit began questioning his order at once. Amongst all the "what the fuck´s" and "bullshit´s" that unanimously sprang up among all of us, a sudden realization dawned on me. The sergeant was an asshole, a hard headed man who would obsess about how everything had to be done correctly. He stressed correctness, he was morally sound, and he was about to ask us to fire on civilians. I helped my detachment calm down, and promptly asked him to explain what was going on.
"The town, the people, we don't fucking know what to make of it." His voice cracked halfway through the sentence upon seeing a toddler who's face was completely stripped of flesh, yet still managed to run as best he could towards us, screaming feraly, oblivious to the fact that one of his eyes hung completely out of it's socket.
"Fuck this, to the barracks, we'll be overrun if we stand out here." The order was clear, we armed up and hunkered down in the barracks, sealing off the doors and moving to the top floor to get a better view. There were thirty of us, not a single one of us wanted to fire, none of us knew what was going on. Our enemy converged on our position, and while we could have easily dropped a few grenades on them from the rooftop, none of us had the heart to do it. None of it made sense, we couldn't do it, what godless thing happened to these poor people.
My mouth tasted like rust, my tounge was dry, I was numb, I had only been awake for a minute and already questioned my sanity. We turned on the floodlights and the area around the barracks lit up promptly. There were hundreds now, many of them soldiers in their underwear, we were completely overrun. My heart beat out of my chest and I felt my temples thud with dull pain as I recognized the new recruit I had often hit on. She was nude, her body lined with scratches and bites, her knee popped off and contorted in an unrecognizable state. She musn't have been completely converted yet, as she kept screaming for help as she thrust around violently.
It was contagious, they infected through touch, we all saw it and realized that the situation was only going to get worse. Our gas masks were on by this point, and we had to act quickly in order to escape. There was a single hercules paratroop transport plane on the runway about two hundred meters to the left of the barracks. None of us knew how to pilot the damn thing, but the sergeant had taken private flying lessons in the past, we all knew it and looked to him in desperation.
He pulled the first pin, threw the first grenade, sacrificed his ethics, his morality first... for us. It changes you, killing a civilian, it turns you into something you had hoped never existed, something dark and filthy, but it had to be done. We followed in suit, the explosions lighting up the night, trying to look away and keep ourselves from realizing what we were doing. In retrospect, I should have waited, I should have questioned the orders, for all we knew the effects could have been momentary, they could have been reversible.
We waged our little war, twenty-some men huddled around the sergeant, protecting the only man capable of pulling the plane off the ground. We made our way through the dark, pushing slowly but surely to the plane, whatever resistance we found quickly fell. I peeled off a few rounds into a group of japanese men, probably tourists, they took no mind, flailing about on the ground as what little humanity I had left parted. The plane was boarded and prepped, we took off. Nothing happened, we were fine, we escaped unscathed. What happened to them? Why did this all happen, we had no idea, all we knew was that we were under attack, we were in danger.
I clear my throat, look up into the General's eyes, look towards the rest of the staff currently holding us in contempt for crimes against humanity. The man looked dissapointed, rubbed the bridge of his nose while lifting his glasses, and promptly placed them back down before continuing his cross-examination.
"What you witnessed was, in fact, a terrorist ploy, as you have already been informed. The nerve gas sent down on the town had a similar effect to that of PCP. The gas caused heavy hallucinations, nervous spasms, and violent outbreaks. Their pain was real, their screaming was real, they were begging for help, they were not able to take control of their actions and simply screamed in anguish as you fired upon them. There was no infection, they would have not contaminated you, but your preconceptions and irresponsible acts caused you to panic and act out of impulse. You mentioned just now that in retrospect you wouldn't have attacked, that you would have waited to see if the effects were permanent, if they would have passed? The answer is yes, within hours the effects subside, there would have been casualties, carnage, death, but not this... this massacre you and your men provoked. Your shameful acts have given the enemy the leverage that they needed to instill fear in the hearts of this country, we no longer have support, people question our very nature, whether or not we are needed. Take this man down with the rest of his group, the hearing will determine the sentence in three months time..."
I looked down, felt the cold steel of the cuffs keeping me from moving, and felt empty... so empty...
Author
Topic: *OVER* [Giveaway] Dead Island 3 copies (Read 5191 times)