In Utter Darkness: Chapter 2: It Begins
#3 of New Beginnings
What doesn't kill you makes you stranger.
In Utter Darkness: Chapter 2: It Begins
Date: (Unknown) Invasion
Location: New York City, New York
"It's a new day," I mused to myself as I waited for the subway to roll in. Life was good, I had recently transferred to Rensseleaer Polytechnic Institute to work on my master's in, what was commonly referred to as, "Future Tech," and life was looking up. I wasn't attending this summer in order to get a job to pay for the fall semester but hey, we all have to make sacrifices. As I stood there waiting I noticed one of those doomsayers with a "The End is Nigh," signs shouting at passersby to "repent of their sins lest they burn." He was wrong, but not about the end being closer than any of us expected.
As the subway pulled up I looked up to see security escorting the man out of the station with disgust in their eyes. It appeared it was not the first time they had done this but it was certainly the last. I boarded the subway and was pleasantly surprised to note that the TV inside of it wasn't busted or defaced. There had been a push to install televisions on every subway car but, predictably, most had been destroyed within a week. The news was just replaying the SETI story with the traditional spin and finger pointing that usually encompassed every newscast nowadays. We had politicians on both sides of the aisle promoting new "safety measures" that would "protect American lives" from terrorists. Everyone knew that stuff was bullshit, ever since the New Years Day massacre the government had started controlling more and more of civilian life to the point where any abnormal activity was probable cause for police to show up at your door.
Not that they had ever done that to me. Allow me to introduce myself, my name is Ryan Thompson, a geeky college student who upheld the law even if I didn't do my civil "duty" to vote. Before the invasion I was a straight A student at my universities even though people thought I was insane for enrolling at 16. They weren't laughing now as I was going to be a 21 year old with a Masters. Granted I had missed out a lot on the fun and physical side of life. I had never gotten a girlfriend and I was six feet tall and only 120 pounds. My friends always joked that in a paintball match I could turn sideways and disappear, if only that were true.
My destination that morning was the Empire State Building; I had always hated trying to apply for a job online, much preferring to state my case in person. Granted I also hated trying to navigate New York but it was less troublesome then trying to use a computer with all the scrutiny nowadays. Something that had bugged me though was how the SETI incident had been handled. Any outside piece of information that was posted online or anywhere else was quickly taken down and any news agency that ran a story about it later printed redactions saying that they were wrong. It had multiple conspiracy theorists going nuts, and honestly I also suspected something was fishy. If it were just a case of domestic terrorism then why all the secrecy? I didn't know but it was unlikely that any of us would ever find out.
Four hours later I was ready to scream. I had managed to interview with all of three companies thanks to new policies in place to guarantee employee safety. There were now scanners similar to what had been used in airports now installed in every major business and meeting place and being stuck in line behind countless employees was not a fun experience especially when it took an hour and a half to get into the effing building. Sometimes, I wished I was a terrorist just so I could get through a damn line for once. I glanced around fearfully thinking that somehow, someone had picked up that though. "Great," I muttered, "Now, I am becoming a conspiracy theorist." I received odd looks for that but ignored them and moved forward to keep up.
Well I had something crossed off my list. That list included not a lot of things that I hadn't done yet but still needed to complete. At least "getting a job" was done. The others: skydive, learn karate, and get a girlfriend etc were probably not going to happen anytime soon, if ever. This time I took a cab back home to my apartments as after 6 PM security got antsy at the subways and there had been more than a few "accidents" there. I nodded to my landlady as I walked up and I made a note to put "get a roommate" to the list. The rent was killing me. As I wound down for the day, I lay there wondering about how tomorrow would go and I hoped it would at least be more interesting than today.
My wish didn't appear to be granted. I woke up made a scrumptious breakfast consisting of a microwave pancake and toast and listened to more pundits bitching about how the other one was wrong. There was also a short article on something odd NASA had found but I turned it off as I really didn't care what space had to offer. As I rushed out to the subway station I waved to the landlady who just glared at me as if she could report me for suspicious behavior. Oh boy, today was going to be fun.
At least the doomsayer wasn't anywhere to be found although there were several concrete barriers and increased military personnel in the station. That was unusual to say the least; I hadn't heard anything that indicating was amiss. I walked up to a station employee and asked, "Is it safe to ride the tram? Is something up? There seems to be a lot of increased security in the station." "Not to my knowledge," she replied, "They showed up about three hours ago and their orders check out." I shrugged and walked towards the waiting subway that has just arrived thinking that I just might get proven wrong about today.
Surprise, surprise, I managed to end up in the tram with the working TV. Pleasantly surprised by this I glanced up and noticed something immediately that something must be horribly wrong. Since the Massacre, the threat level system had been changed to something a little more understandable. What caught my eye was that the threat level had been changed to "Omega." This was not good at all. Omega was supposed to indicate a massive attack with high expectation of casualties in the upper thousands. "Fuck, this ain't good," I heard someone mutter in the car. I couldn't agree more, sometimes it sucks to live in NYC, everything always seems to target here first. I gulped and looked around; I wasn't the only one who appeared unsettled by this news. When I got off at my stop it looked as though more security personnel had been added to the terminal. This wasn't good at all.
When I got to the Empire State Building there was a markedly shorter line than yesterday. "Smart fuckers," I thought, "they get to stay home while I have to come in as it is my first day." The only bright side to it was that the line to get in was miniscule compared to usual. I had just gotten on the elevator to the 32nd floor where my home was to be when it happened. Air raid sirens started sounding with the automated speakers blaring to life that "this was not a drill." I immediately started running out of the building and joined the crowd milling outside in the street awaiting further directions. It probably wasn't the best idea in hindsight.
A lady in the crowd started screaming and I looked up just in time to see a bright flash right before the earth shook. A large crater was gouged in the asphalt about 50 feet away and I could see people shouting and moving away from it, some not moving at all. I hadn't time to process it before multiple fighter aircraft streaked towards the thing that had fired. We were finally told what to do when the speaker crackled to life telling us that a mandatory evacuation of NYC was in place and to move to the subway system. Instantly, the crowd starting pushing and shoving, desperately trying to get to the safety of the underground, I was among the throng and managed to get inside just before I heard several muffled thumps and an F-22 fell out of the sky.
It appeared the military personnel in the station had nearly tripled, with barricades pointing towards the entrances as if expecting a ground assault. Over the din of the crowd I heard someone yelling, "Anyone with firearms experience please come over here, else get on the subway to be evacuated." I hesitated for only a second. I had seen this type of movie before, it was always better to be armed than unarmed, even if you did have to stay behind. I may not have had extensive firearms training but how hard could it be? I had participated in Airsoft and paintball before and I knew the basics. I rushed to the staging area and was slightly disappointed that not many people were staying behind to help, the pricks. The soldier standing there just handed me a rifle and 5 clips on ammunition and ordered me to pick a position and wait for further orders. "This doesn't look good, not if they are giving random people weapons," I surmised.
While the civilians were boarding the cars, I was blissful, my first time holding a real gun other than a retarded plastic thing. I examined it, noticing that it looked like an M4 with nothing else on it. I was slightly miffed that I didn't get anything fancy like a dot sight or more ammunition but what did I really expect. After the subway had departed one of the soldiers dethatched himself from the throng and moved to the front to address us. "All right boys and girls, my name is Sgt. Ramirez and our orders are to hold this station at all costs till all civilians are evacuated. Then and only then will we get to leave. Now you may be wondering why you only get 5 clips of ammunition. The reason for this is the armory was hit while we were mobilizing and as such we only managed to recover a small amount. Pick your fucking shots, I don't want any yahoos spraying lead because A. I will kick your ass to kingdom come, and B. you won't get any more ammunition. And believe me I have a feeling we will need every last bullet to drop them." "Them," sir?" asked one of the soldiers? "You heard me," he barked, "Now get in your formation."
As I moved to crouch close to one of the concrete pillars around the station I couldn't help but wonder what the Sergeant had meant by "them." I had a feeling I really didn't want to find out. I clutched my rifle close to my chest and we all winced as we heard muffled thumps that only be explosions. Subway cars occasionally passed through with disheveled looking people riding in them, and once I thought I thought I saw people missing limbs and screaming. I shuddered and faced front having a feeling that I got more than I wished for today. Sergeant Ramirez was constantly on the radio and with each passing minute he seemed to look grimmer. "Folks, listen up, we just lost the 42nd street station there won't be any more subways passing through there," he barked, "Furthermore it appears we have enemy dropships closing in on the stations in order to halt our evacuation attempts entirely. This is it; the last subways coming through are our ticket out. We need to hold on till then." I gulped, this was far worse than I had ever anticipated, and what was I thinking at playing soldier? I was going to get killed!
First contact we had with the aliens was when one of their fighters got shot down right in front of our station. We had no idea that whatever was inside of it was still alive but we sure as hell found out when it ran into the station. "What the fuck is that," yelled one of the privates. "Just shoot it and ask later!" shouted Ramirez before 3 soldiers opened fire and put the vaguely avian thing out of its misery. "Jesus, aliens," a Cpl. commented, "I didn't join the Army to fight aliens." Another soldier piped up, "Well that wasn't so bad, what are we all worried about?" "Shut up," intoned the Sgt. "tell us about it once we got out of here." I was jazzed, we had just taken down an alien and all it took was a few well placed bullets. I hadn't fired as I didn't want to get bitched at by Ramirez for my crappy aim but I ended up not having to fire a shot. I might actually survive this day.
That all changed once the dropship showed up. About 12 of the alien things were left in the middle of the street and they weren't the same soft targets that the pilot was. The first we knew of them was when they dashed into the lobby area and opened fire with their energy weapons. There were roughly 30 of us and 12 of them but it didn't look like we were doing so well. I opened fire on one of the aliens, pleased to see that I was actually hitting it, but that didn't last long as it had a faint glow around it and my shots bounced off. I continued firing and thankfully after about 5-6 shots the bubble faded and I started hitting its armor. 4 of the aliens had already been downed right then but I didn't know that locked in my own personal engagement. The bullets didn't seem to do much to its weird crystalline armor but it was starting to crack and large chips were flying off. It seemed like this battle took forever in my mind but in reality it had only been about 5-6 seconds. I ran out of ammo and as I was reloading, another soldier took out the one I had been shooting at. I nearly whooped but an energy shot hit the pillar I was hiding behind and above me, melting it away and huge chunks sloughing off.
I thought we might actually win this engagement when one of the aliens chucked a glowing blue ball right into the thickest concentration of defenders. A few just stared dumbfounded at the thing but most dived over the barricades only to be cut down by the relentless fire. Then the charge went off and my vision went blue and all I heard were the screams of those both alien and human. As soon as the afterimages started to fade I knew we had lost. There were only about 6 of us left including me but about 4 of the aliens. Of those six, one of them was missing an arm and another's chest was smoking. I just kept firing managing to take one of them down but I was down to my last mag. I kept hoping the subway would show up any second but to my horror the only thing that came out of the tunnel was another group of hostiles. I screamed and turned to engage just as a wave of enemy fire hit the concrete above me knocking huge chunks off and sending me into unconsciousness.
New York: Status Lost
Alien Casualties: Unknown (presumed low)
Civilian Casualties: Unknown (presumed massive)
Assessment: Pockets of resistance may remain but NYC has been lost, recommend immediate transfer of personnel to vital areas. New York is gone.
All I know after that is what happened when I awoke. Our end had begun.
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All right my first attempt at writing a combat scene. Sorry, if it sucks but hey that is what comments are for.