Humankind_Saga 1

by Mic Shannon

  “So, what do ya got here?” asked the veteran SEAL, looking down at the crate.

  The CIA operative used his foot to kick open the lid on one of the crates. Inside were twenty green camouflage hazmat suits. They were form-fitting, like a wetsuit, with built-in kneepads, elbow pads, and flak armor. The hard helmet sat on top of the head, with a plexiglass shield in front of the face that zipped onto the top of the suit around the neck. He grabbed one of the suits and laid it out in front of the Senior Chief.

  “So apparently,” began the operative, brushing the dust off the uniform he had laid out, “Somewhere above my pay grade they say this will keep us safe.”

  “I guess we’ll find out,” joked one of the junior SEALs, soliciting a few chuckles from the rest of his buddies.

  “Alright,” said the Senior Chief, “let’s lock and load! Grab a suit and let’s get ready. We move out in thirty minutes.”

  --- 9:16 am ---

  Alexandria, VA, USA

  The morning sun had begun to warm the crisp evening air that had cooled them down from the sweltering heat of the previous day.

  “You alright, Cynt?” asked Michael as he put his arm around her to comfort her. He brushed her hair behind her ear and pulled her close while they sat on the concrete stairs, keeping each other company and trying to calm their anxious minds.

  “Yeah, I’m ok,” she replied with a sigh, “Just stressed. I miss my brother. I haven’t talked to him since the network towers shut down Friday night. As if I didn’t only have, like, three percent battery on my wristphone anyway.”

  Michael hung his head, unsure of what to say. He didn’t even have anyone to call.

  “They say they’re going to set up phone centers so we can call our families, but…” she wrapped her arms around her stomach and hunched over, shaking her head, “who knows. I mean, I saw my life going different. I was ready to graduate and go to college, but like, here we are. It’s just stressful, ya know?”

  “Yeah,” said Michael, knowing what it’s like to have family you’d give anything to talk to, “me too. Have you heard anything from Gianna?”

  “Friday afternoon,” she replied, “she’s fine. She’s at the stadium downtown with Bucky. I do miss her though, like, I don’t even have my girl here with me. She says it’s worse over there, though. They’re showering in tents and eating food out of plastic bags.”

  “That’s terrible,” replied Michael, “I don’t even get why we’re here.”

  The TV’s in the lecture hall had been showing nothing but jarring images, until the news was shut down the day prior. People being gunned down in the street by the National Guard while looting, military forces from all over the globe evacuating civilians and moving toward landing zones, upset civilians speaking out against the government’s policies. According to the news, the world was in full scale anarchy; not too far from the truth, albeit the media’s colorful exaggerations.

  “So,” said Cynthia, leaning in close to him, “I, like, overheard some of the guards talking…they said they’re going to be moving us all soon.”

  “Moving us to where?” asked Michael.

  “I don’t know,” she replied, “but they said, like, sometime next week.”

  “I just hope they keep us all together,” Michael replied with a sobering look, “I can’t lose anyone else. You, Ms. Tanya, these…misfit kids…us misfit kids…you’re my only family ya know?”

  He smiled with his mouth only, his eyes holding back the pain from within. Cynthia leaned over and kissed Michael out of nowhere. He was taken aback by it, attributing her response to his apparent vulnerability. He fixed his face and put his mask back on.

  “Eww,” said Manny, walking over to them from around the corner where everyone was eating “get a freaking room.”

  “I’m gonna go finish eating with my dad, okay?” she said, smiling as with a long sigh.

  When she got up and walked away, Michael could tell that she was worn out. Her hips didn’t quite swing the same anymore. She wasn’t as hopeful or excited about anything. He feared it…feared growing up way too fast. Forevermore, he would always remember the day everything changed. He fantasized to himself, wishing he could find a way to make her happy amidst the uncertainty and misery that was constantly looming.

  Manny approached and grabbed a few pebbles off the steps, slinging them into the air lazily, trying to hit whatever was in the distance. After his hand was empty, he sat down, bored out of his own mind.

  “I wish we could play some ball or something,” he said, grabbing some more pebbles and slinging them away.

  “I heard they’re moving us somewhere else next week,” Michael said, squinting into the distance with his mask on tightly.

  Manny stopped throwing the rocks to look at him, “moving us where?!”

  “I dunno,” he replied, squinting into the distance again, “but…you know…whatever I guess.”

  “What’s your biggest fear, Mikey?” asked Manny, breaking Michael’s stare.

  Michael looked at him, instinctively trying to analyze his reason for asking such a question, then brought down his guard once he remembered who was asking. He looked down at the ground and began playing with one of the pebbles with his shoe.

  “Well, I dunno umm…” he ran his fingers through his curly hair, “losing you, man. Losing you, and Cynthia, and Tee…and little Sammy and Ms. Tanya and everyone else. I mean, y’all all I really got, ya know? That’s it.”

  Manny nodded his head and lowered his eyes, understanding that exact reality.

  “What about you?” Michael asked.

  He looked surprised, as if he didn’t know that question was coming. Cutting his eyes, he thought about it for a moment.

  “I’m afraid I’m not gonna make it to the league,” he said, smiling.

  “No, you’re not,” said Michael, pausing for a moment, “you’re afraid no one will like you. That you won’t be good enough.”

  “What are you talking about?” asked Manny, leaning away.

  “No, I’m just saying,” he began again, “you just try too hard sometimes. You can be yourself. People will like you for you. And if they don’t, fuck ‘em.”

  Manny gave a devious snicker when he heard the curse, but stopped to think about those jarring words that peeled the layers back to his core. He needed to hear it, though. It soothed him, in a way, to know the person that he was always looking up to could see through his troubling past and still like the real him.

  --- 11:03 am ---

  Pan American Highway, Costa Rica

  The loud roar of the Humvee’s diesel engine made conversation difficult as they barreled down the highway approaching Buenos Aires. They were traveling in a convoy of six at remarkably unsafe speeds for such heavy vehicles, desperate to reach their appointed coordinates in time. Flying past a pineapple farm, the door-less Humvee bounced back and forth while the passengers inside struggled to hold on.

  “So, what kind of gas are we being exposed to?” yelled the Chief to his former SEAL counterpart, now turned CIA, through the mask of the hazmat suit.

  “Well Chief,” he replied, yelling over the loud audible noise of the Humvee, “that’s what we wanna find out.”

  “No information on your end Jim?”

  “Believe it or not Chief, sometimes they tell me just as much as you!”

  He sat back, thinking, then leaned forward and poked him in his arm forcefully.

  “You just better hope that these suits can keep my guys alive!” he barked, concerned for his SEAL’s lives over his own.

  “They’re my friends too Chief,” replied the CIA operative, attempting to calm down his former superior.

  The Chief squinted as he kept watch on the horizon ahead, looking for any noticeable signs of poison gas through his AR Glasses. All Special Forces Operators were required to wear the goggles, loaded with Augmented Reality software that identified friendly, civilian, or hostile targets in real time. Commanders could set rally points or
mission objectives that were highlighted by the AR Glasses and displayed over real landscapes. For this mission, their orders had been made clear, under no circumstances were they to remove their AR Glasses during an operation. As the Humvee bounced everyone around, the chatter of radio communications came blaring through. The radio operator sat in the back communicating with the command center.

  “Command, this is Zeus Two, radio check, over.”

  “Copy Zeus Two,” the radio chatter broke, “It looks like our last reported danger area is about 15 mics in front of your location. We have Apache Gunship support coming up to your rear; callsign Apache One. ETA is less than five.”

  The Chief unzipped his helmet and lifted it, leaning out of the passenger side doorframe to spit out a dark brown wad of dip spit. As he leaned back into the Humvee and wiped his lips with the back of his hand, he tapped the two legs to his left.

  “How you doing up there?” he yelled to the machine gunner standing with the top half of his body out of the roof. He was holding on to a MK-21 automatic grenade launcher.

  “I’m bored Chief,” he yelled, “I don’t have anything to shoot!”

  “Hang in there and stay frosty,” he replied, zipping his helmet back around his neck, “who knows what we’re about to encounter.”

  They turned off the highway, heading toward the city. The vehicle accelerated, dust from the road flying up into the air. Overhead, an AH-74 Apache helicopter flew past them and broke off to the right of their position.

  “What do they see? Talk to me Radio!” yelled the Chief, calling his field radio operator by his nickname.

  “I’m not getting any COMM at all,” he yelled back, “it’s all static! No Command, no Apache One nothing!”

  Zooming through the urban terrain of one story homes, they began noticing more and more buildings riddled with gunfire, accompanied with the surreal sight of human body parts and dismembered torsos strewn around like a horror movie. James, the CIA operative, trying to stay calm as he drove over arms and legs, looked over at Chief Harris, both men immediately elevating their already heightened sense of awareness. The gore didn’t bother them; they had learned to block out those senses. Instead it was the analysis. They had seen devastation of this kind before, but not without any evidence of an explosion or the sharp smell of cordite.

  James blinked twice.

  “Jesus Christ. Hey Chief, look at these body parts?” yelled the machine gunner.

  “You just keep your eyes open up there,” replied the Chief.

  What he didn’t say was that he had a bad feeling. A feeling he hadn’t felt in a long time. A nervousness, or rather, foreboding.

  “You, Radio. Try ‘em again!”

  “Still nothing, Chief!” he yelled back.

  They reached the end of the road and made a hard right. The sun was now directly in their face, causing a blinding sun spot from the plexiglass on the helmet. The lenses on their AR Glasses immediately shaded the sun, but the electronic target guidance began to malfunction. In the distance, a heat wave looking layer of thick gas encompassed the area.

  “Hey Chief,” said the MK-21 gunner, gripping the weapon on high alert, “are you seeing this?!”

  “I guess this is do or die!” yelled James to the Chief, gripping the wheel with both hands and accelerating.

  Approaching the gas, their pulses began to race. The machine gunner put his hand above his eyes to see, trying to shield them from the sun’s reflection on the plexiglass.

  “Let’s rock and roll!” yelled the Chief, putting his hand on his head to make sure his helmet was on properly.

  Driving through the thick, heavy vapor, James began to hold his breath. He inhaled slowly, nervously, yet relieved that his suit was holding up against the unknown poison. They scanned the road and the surrounding buildings, looking for any signs of activity.

  “What do you see?” asked the Chief to the others in the vehicle, still bouncing from the body parts as it ran over human flesh.

  “What’s that?!” asked the machine gunner, unable to determine friend from foe as easily without the AR’s target guidance.

  Fifty yards away, a young woman on the opposite side of the road began to scream at the top of her lungs. Her clothes were splattered with blood and her demeanor was standoffish, her hair down over her face as she breathed heavily. The machine gunner traversed the large mounted weapon toward her.

  The crazy woman began sprinting toward the convoy with her arms waving. She was hysterically shouting, and it became apparent that she was trying to get the attention of the military vehicles heading her way. As she ran out into the middle of the highway, about 40 feet from the first vehicle, she suddenly flatted to the ground, blood squirting out of her body.

  “What the fuck?!” yelled the machine gunner.

  The first vehicle in the convoy slammed its brakes in panic, its tires sliding the vehicle at an angle, then was suddenly flipped upside down by an outside force. James, driving the second vehicle in the convoy, stomped the brake pedal as the Humvee in front of them lay twisted, the occupants trapped inside.

  Immediately, as if on cue, the young machine gunner hanging out of the roof started firing the MK-19. Grenade rounds fired into the distance as he sprayed right and left. On his fourth shot, as he traversed past the upside-down Humvee, a grenade round struck its target.

  He watched the round explode in mid-air, pausing to try and digest what he just saw, then began unloading several more rounds in the direction. James held the brake as hard as he could, but was eventually forced to push the emergency brake and locked it in place with his toes. As the Humvee slid to a stop, the other vehicles behind them instinctively started opening fire. The rounds from the large Browning M-2.50 caliber machine guns began to ricochet off the invisible object, striking buildings in the distance. James blinked twice, in disbelief at the unseen target.

  “Contact front! Keep shooting!”

  The rounds again began to fly past the area where their target had once been. They aimed wildly trying to find it, spraying and praying. Squinting as he searched for a target amongst the chaos, James jumped in his seat and turned around when he heard the Humvee behind them flip. Horrid screams filled his ears as blood splattered in different directions from their dismemberment.

  He hit the gas immediately to get out of the danger zone, swerving around the flipped Humvee with the other vehicles following closely behind. He could barely see, barreling down the highway as the machine gunner grabbed his helmet and leaned down.

  “What the fuck was that?!” he yelled, standing back up and grabbing the automatic grenade launcher in fear.

  “Hey Chief,” yelled James to the senior enlisted SEAL.

  “Yeah,” yelled the Chief with concern straining his vocal chords as he changed the magazine in his rifle.

  James grabbed his weapon with his right hand and presented it in front of the Chief’s face.

  “I think we’re gonna need a bigger boat!”

  MON, JUN 5th, 2034

  Unknown Location

  2:37 am

  S itting on the edge of the bed and rubbing her temples, the President worried desperately for her nation. Her husband rolled over, disturbed by her restlessness. He pulled back the covers and sat up, sliding up behind her and rubbing her shoulders.

  “You okay?” he asked with concern, knowing the answer, but nonetheless leaving an opportunity for her to vent.

  “I don’t know,” she replied, lifting her head and running her fingers through her kinky hair, “I’m scared for our people.”

  “You’re always scared for our people,” he retorted, continuing his slow massage.

  “Yeah, well, this is different,” she said, shrugging as he hit the spot that had been bothering her all day.

  “Is it really that bad?” he asked, not knowing any of the top-secret information she was privy to, “I thought all of this was just protocol.”

  She was silent for a moment, rotating her neck around, enjoy
ing the massage. Her silence was his confirmation.

  “Well, we have our best guys on the ground, right?”

  A loud knock on the large metal door startled the couple. She looked over at the time. 2:42 am. Getting up to grab her silk robe, she folded it over to cover her breasts and walked to the door, cracking it open.

  “Mrs. President,” said one of the Marines, “we have an update.”

  She closed the door and threw off the robe, grabbing a pair of presidential sweatpants, a sports bra, and a tee shirt and rushing to put them on.

  “I’ll be back,” she said to her husband, pecking him on the lips and leaving the room before he could reply.

  Hastily making her way down the hall, she was attentive and alert. She needed to know what was going on and what they were facing. As she rounded the corner, the door lifted in a flash, revealing another well-hidden room. Her staff were already in the room. Patricia yawned and rubbed her eyes, sitting up at the table. General Adams sat upright in his chair, proudly wearing his United States Marine Corps sweat suit. CIA Director Horn had finally arrived, sitting up to put out his cigar in the ashtray and begin their meeting.

  “So,” said the President as she entered the room and took her seat, “talk to me.”

  “Our first reports are grim,” said the General as he leaned back in his chair and looked at the Commander in Chief, his face noticeably concerned, “Reconnaissance teams moved south into the small province of Puntarenas and entered a pocket of gas near the city of Buenos Aires. That’s when we lost communications.”

  The General paused for a moment to look the President in the eye.

  “After no response,” he continued, standing up to walk over to the world map plastered to the wall, “we staged our Marine Recon Battallions here, in Guatemala City to hold the line. One of the Apache pilots that flew support for the SEALs gave a report.”