PARADISE LOST
“Hell is empty and all the devils are here.”
William Shakespeare, The Tempest
“If you are going through Hell, keep going.”
Winston Churchill
It happened on November 3rd. I remember, because it was Eileen’s birthday. We were sitting on the balcony at a sushi restaurant way up in the hills, overlooking the city lights. It was rarity — a smog-less night in Los Angeles — and the sky above us was a shimmering blanket of stars.
“Look,” she whispered, grabbing my hand and gazing upward. A falling star was streaking across the heavens. “Make a wish!”
As we watched, the star grew brighter, and was joined by several more. Soon the sky was filled with fiery streaks of orange light. Murmurs of astonishment spread among the other diners. A meteor shower? Now a sound grew — a distant, sustained whine. Slowly, I rose to my feet. The sound continued to grow in waves, passing through a cry and into a scream.
This was no meteor shower.
Across the city, one of the fiery streaks impacted, and an entire city block erupted in a mushroom cloud of flame. Among the gasps, a woman screamed. Strange metallic shapes began to swoop low over the city. One of them banked sharply and headed straight for the balcony. Tables overturned and glassware shattered. Shouts and screams filled the air as the panicked crowd dove for cover. Eileen shouted my name as a blast ripped through the building. The fiery explosion threw me over the balcony into the cool night air. As I tumbled, flaming debris and splintered wood fell all around me.
Blackness overtook me.
It’s been eighteen months.
Eighteen months since I awoke on the scorched grass on a hill beneath the smoking ruin of the restaurant. Eighteen months since I lost Eileen. Eighteen months since they arrived.
Los Angeles was reduced to smoking rubble. Rumors at the refugee camps were that the invaders were moving north, towards San Francisco, and south, towards the border. New York, I’d heard, was gone. Simply gone. As to the rest of the country… hell, the rest of the world? It was only a matter of time. I decided to head east.
I caught a ride in the back of a pick-up, a battered hydrogen cell conversion, with two hydroponics ranchers. Jaime and Umberto didn’t mind the company, or the dehydrated meal packs I’d scrounged from a burnt-out sporting goods store in San Dimas. We took back roads, avoiding the freeways. The Bane were watching the freeways.
We didn’t call them that, of course. Jaime called them “The Lobster Men From Mars.” Said it was from an old b-movie he’d seen. We’d laughed at that.
We’d heard about a refugee camp near the Nevada border. Umberto had a cousin who had taken his family there, but he hadn’t spoken to him in weeks. Even if his cell phone battery wasn’t drained, all of the towers were down. “Those Lobster Men are smart,” Umberto joked. We didn’t laugh so much, this time.
We reached the camp, or what was left of it, shortly after sunrise. We found piles of burnt bodies. Men, women and children mercilessly slaughtered. There were no more jokes after that. We buried them as best we could. Then we cried like babies.
It was south of Flagstaff that we stumbled on a Bane outpost. By that time, we’d about had enough. If our days were numbered, best to take as many of them with us as possible. I had a sonic pistol, an Audiodyne Police Special, with a single battery clip. Umberto had an old rusty shotgun. Jaime had a box of Molotov cocktails made from empty Corona bottles stuffed with rags.
We lasted all of three minutes. I think we might have injured one of them. Umberto was cut in half by some kind of plasma beam. I can still hear Jaime’s screams as his body went up in flames. I don’t know how I got out of there alive, but I did. I wandered for two days before collapsing from exhaustion.
I awoke that night in a flood of bright light, a cloud of swirling dust, and the deafening, keening whine of an engine. I raised my hands above my head as shadowy armored figures emerged from the night, weapons raised.
“It’s all right, son. We’re AFS.” It was a gruff, human voice.
“AFS?”
“The Allied Free Sentients. We’re the good guys.”
It was their leader, Commander Taylor, who I first heard use the word “Bane.” He told me a lot of crazy things. He also told me that the AFS was an armed resistance fighting the invaders at a place called “Foreas.” I asked if that was in Texas. He and his men seemed to think that was pretty funny.
We boarded a military dropship — I think they called it a Hedgehog — and traveled for several hours. I have no idea where they took me.
As I write this, I’m lying on a bunk in some kind of underground base. I can hear muffled explosions beyond the walls. They tell me the Bane are on the move again, and we need to get to Foreas as soon as possible. They say we’re shipping out in the morning.
I don’t know where Foreas is or how we’re going to get there, but I do know this. The Bane took my life away from me. It’s gone. All gone.
Tabula Rasa. Clean slate.
It’s a new beginning. Today my life has a purpose. Today I know who I am. I’m a soldier. An AFS soldier.
Tomorrow, I go to war.
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