Invade

"It's game over for you, Holloway..." The sharply dressed man and his thugs surrounded a man who obviously wasn't dressed to face a situation like this. Slowly, the thugs closed in on the man, forcing him into a corner. It didn't help that half of the room was nothing but glass, but Holloway needed to something fast, before...

He crashed through to window, falling a couple of floors down and landing on the broken pieces of glass. He slammed onto several rocks near the bottom, and lay lifeless on the ground.

"Damn it all!" I shouted, almost throwing my controller across the room, "What the hell am I supposed to do? It's bad enough the gate guards cost me 3 minutes, let alone more guards sitting behind barriers no less than 3 feet ahead."

"Use the .50 cal. You've kept it since last mission, and all you've been using is that stupid dragon's breath shotgun." My friend, Walter, pointed out.

"Have you seen what this shotgun has got me through?"

"And do you know how much power you have in your inventory? Use the sniper, go back to the shotgun if you need to."

I sighed, "Fine, fine. I'll do it your way."

"Hey, I'm not saying you absolutely have to do what I say; I'm just stating the facts, here."

   I respawned back in front of the gates, where several guards were already pelting me with pistols. I slid under the traffic arm, and killed two of them, and slicing the last one with my knife. Quickly, I switched to my sniper, and hid behind a car, and started popping everyone that came through the door. Walter was right; this was a lot easier than trying to weave in and out behind cover to try to get a kill. Within a minute, I quickly rushed to the door, sprinting as fast as I could to save my friend. I climbed up the stairs and shot both of the thugs enclosing Holloway.

"Davidson?! How--"

"Luck, Magi. I think it's time you face the same fate you set me up against."

"No! I'm not going to die by your hand!"

   Suddenly, he sprinted towards the window behind Holloway, and jumped through. Both of us looked down as he started running towards a quarry. We needed to catch him, lest he end up somewhere else, leading us on another campaign. Both of us ran downstairs, kicking the door down to where he jumped down and started sprinting. Before either of us could react, a zookeeper stood on a hill, and let loose several deadly wildcats. A panther ended up jumping on Holloway, and I had nothing to use at the moment. Looking to my left, there was a spear on the ground, which I started to use to get rid of everything around us. It only took one swipe to kill the panther, and two to kill a lion that wasn't paying attention to anything but a steak on the floor. More zookeepers, came in on an AA tank, and killed the one in front of us.

One of them looked at me, and told me, "Sorry, guys, but it looks like we're going to have to pacify those manta rays..."

   They opened fire in the sky, aiming at a flock of flying manta rays, which were casually flying eastward. They managed to catch one at the end, but they didn't notice it was one of the rarer ones that happened to explode if it died. As it slowly fell to the ground, both of us quickly ran back into the penthouse, and took cover. A flash of light and a very loud explosion sounded off. In the background of a hellish mushroom cloud, stood an older lady. She looked like your average grandma: draped in beige with lace trimming any opening, a buttoned neckline, and a pink apron. Except, her face had this thousand-yard stare and a terrified expression on her face.

In slow, almost droning words, she said, "Now that you've landed the first bomb over Russia, you've officially ended the world. World War Three has begun, and you are the cause of it." The shockwave hit her, she started laughing and screaming at the same time as the skin and muscle was ripped violently off of her bones.

---

"Timmy, c'mon, we need to start packing."

I quickly inhaled, slowly trying to adjust to a room lit by nothing by the TV. It was obviously dim, and I could hardly see anything but the blue tint coming off of the TV, but it was worse when you essentially jerked yourself awake. I stretched, yawning and letting my body go limp as I tried to start myself for the day ahead, "I don't see why we'd be going anywhere; it's a world war, mom..."

"The first bomb already dropped. Who knows what hell is going to be happening here?"

"I guess you'd be right. I'm going outside so I can see what's going on right now."

"Don't be too long. We still have to catch our flight."

   I got out of bed and slipped my shoes on without bothering with my socks. I opened the door to a rather torn down motel. They were nice on the inside, but the looks of this place would deter a lot of people. I headed to my left to the stone wall, which was overlooking what used to be a metropolis in the distance. Instead of a busy skyline, there was a dark, ominous mushroom cloud. The dust around it gave it this sepia type colour, and the rest of the smoke was listlessly moving leftward. It looked like the worst part of the explosion. Not only was it pitch black, but it looked like hell itself was about to rain down on us. There were occasional, near frequent blasts of lightning swimming in it. Behind the clouds was a red glow that flickered along with the lightning. The constant roaring of thunder didn't help, either. Suddenly, a bolt of lightning struck a tree near me. The tree didn't catch fire, nor did it splinter, but turned into a weird material. It looked kind of like an asparagus head and a pine cone mixed with a ball of steel wool. It was in a rough shape of the tree that was there before, but completely still. I wanted to touch it, but I didn't want to take any chances.

   I went back to the room that we were staying in. My dad was telling my mom that he'd be tagging along with some of his friends, since he had to pass by and buy some things for us when we'd get back. He brought my bags out and set them next to my mom's, and hugged me goodbye.

   Suddenly, I'm inside the airport with my mom, who's impatiently, and quite angrily, waiting for the person behind the desk to get off the phone, and help her. I didn't want to stand here with her, so I stepped out of line and followed my friends, who were standing near a pillar. Apparently, there were already some aliens on the ground, and the police here were getting slaughtered, so they were waiting around for someone to bring them gear. I asked to tag along, and they happily agreed to. Again, without any warning, I'm somewhere entirely different. I was suddenly in full swat gear, with a rifle to add. My friends were also geared up, but either of them specializing in their own different thing: one had a shotgun, the other had a shield and a pistol. I was apparently the lead, so I had to go in first. On the count of three, I kicked down the door, and immediately starting firing. For some reason, I felt like I had to rest my nose on the side of the rifle, so instead of shooting accurately, I missed every shot. Of course, my friends did the same, and whatever was in the room was too dumb to realize what was going on, so we just sat them in the corner, and headed out of the other door.

   We opened the door, and immediately saw a battle go on before us. Officers were getting shot, cars were being flipped by explosions, and that dark ominous cloud was even closer than before. We needed to get back into the terminal before something bad happened. We quickly scurried across the runway, hiding behind wreckage and whatever else there was littering the field. We reached a cop near his car, asking him if he needed any sort of help before we left. He was about to say something, but there was this loud, metallic robotic synth that roared over head. All of us ended up on the ground. We looked back to the cop, but he was gone. Half of the car was missing, too. The ground looked like something out of Dragonball: a shallow ditch leading up to a small crater. None of us did any thinking, so it ended up being survival of the fittest. All of us ran towards the control tower, where the military was setting up an AA gun. Running down the airfield didn't do me any good; both of my friends got there, while I was stuck on the pavement, running on what seemed like a treadmill.

Eventually, I gave up, and collapsed on the ground. I closed my eyes, hearing that metallic sound in the distance start to charge.