Chapter 5 - 5

"They're fighting again, Mom," I whined, half bored, half just... Tired. I sat on a chair I pulled up to her bed, and laid my head on its edge. I stared at my mother's face, pale and sunken. One of the machines tied to her beeped in short, constant, intervals. Another helped her breathe. She looked so peaceful. In contrast, I could hear my older brother arguing with my dad in the hall. It was because of something Jacob said. Something that neither I or dad wanted to hear. That Mom was going to go away soon. We all knew it, but it was... It was something none of us wanted to think about.

"You shouldn't have opened your goddamn mouth!" I heard my dad scream at my brother. I wondered how long it would take for a nurse to stop them, or maybe everyone else was scared of the two bears clawing at each other in the hall. My eyes burned from the dried tears. I just wanted some peace. More than that, I wanted Mom to open her eyes. I wanted her to wake up and stop them from hurting each other.

Without her here, we were tearing each other apart. Dad hadn't slept in the house in months. Jacob stayed at his friends and I was left all alone in that big house. Just the other day, Jacob started yelling at me the moment he walked in when I tried to hug him. Because I was happy that, for a moment, I wouldn't be all alone anymore. I didn't understand anything anymore. The world was just... Broken.

"I can't wait to join the army, then you can't say shit!" Jacob barked and I hear the two of them going at each other. I was scared deep down. That one of these days, they would hit me too. I wasn't strong like them, and they were a lot bigger. Dad was twice my size and Jacob was right up there with him. Me? I was an average kid... Maybe just a little weaker.

I remembered something and sat up. I pulled ruffled through my backpack and pulled out a sketchbook. "I drew something today!" I said to my mom. "Ms. Hensley says I'm a good drawer for a middle-schooler!" I beamed as I flipped through to the doodle I made in class today. I turned the book for her to see. Two hands holding a handful of California poppies; her favorite flower.

"I suck at hands," I said with a small smile. "But I'm definitely good at flowers." The silence hung in the air for a few minutes. I knew she wouldn't respond, yet, I had hoped she would. We weren't whole without her. She had been like this for a month and we were already at each other's throats. My uncles and aunts were already circling, asking about her will...

I slumped back into the uncomfortable hospital chair, then I realized that I couldn't hear the others anymore. I looked at the hospital door and strained my ears. Nothing.

I turned to look out the window. It only took a few seconds for them to start arguing outside the hospital. I died a little inside at that. It seemed I was the only one who really loved her. None of them ever sat with her, and all they would do is argue when they saw each other. They rarely spoke with me, and recently, even began to avoid me. That was until Jacob and I had that little fight. That fight caused this fight, though I suspected it was just a good enough excuse to fight it out again.

The few trees the hospital was allowed to have swayed side to side. I had a sudden inclination to find out if the breeze was nice. I got up and walked to the window. I unlatched it, slid it open, and a nice fresh breeze tickled me. It was colder than the hospital was. Mom was lucky that Dad dropped a lot of money on a VIP room with a real window that could be opened.

I heard the guys screaming at each other, but I didn't understand a word. Something else caught my attention.

A woodpecker was going to town on one of the trees closest to the window. I was on the fourth floor, but the tree was almost trimmed bare. The thuds its beak made as it shredded the tree's inside sounded eerily like machine gun fire. Then I looked down. A straight fall down. I looked to the woodpecker again, and it somehow seemed louder. I heard faint voices and I looked down again.

"Get off the ledge, Kian!" Jacob screamed up at me, and I realized I was sitting on the window ledge, my legs swinging like it was just another day. Dad was gone, but I didn't care. He was always gone. Always. Gone.

I looked back to the bird, but this time, the tree was covered in blood. The bird's attack roared just like a heavy machine gun. "Wake up!" I heard a different voice, and I fell forward.

« † »

"Wake up, kid!" The scene was washed away and the sun was chased away by the darkness. The constant gunfire of the .50 Heavy Machine Gun, HMG, on the ramp lit the interior of the osprey like a strobe light. The man in front of me had blood smeared across his face. One eye was shut and bandaged; he looked like a monster for a moment...

I almost screamed on reflex, but he covered my mouth with a bloodied hand. "Shut up!" He growled. After I had managed to regain myself, something that took a few seconds; he let go and handed me a rifle. "Get on the window and shoot those f.u.c.k.i.n.g shits!" He said. He quickly unbuckled me and pulled me up. He then guided me with haste towards the front of the helicopter before he stopped short of the final window. Where a dead marine was slumped over with an arrow in his head.

"Take his place." He gave me a sharp tug before he disappeared down the hull, another rifle in hand. The concussive waves of the machine gun rattled me, but curiosity won over my fear. I could already tell we've crashed, and that there were a few people alive. From the man below, I could see that we're in some deep shit. But not in the "We're getting shot up" shit, but something stranger.

I peaked out the gunner window and... Paled.

Outside were hundreds of beady red eyes. They glowed in the distance, in between the trees of a forest slightly down. I pulled my head back, and just in time too. A few arrows clattered against the hull, and a few actually made it past the window. I slide myself into a small crevice as my heart finally began to race.

"What the f.u.c.k!" I screamed internally. I was too scared to actually voice it. I wasn't scared enough to not notice the sudden hellish situation we were in. I got pulled out of bed during an invasion, watched a few of my brother's friends die; not to mention the city explode with nuclear fire. A small part of me wished that I was the Main Character in a show or something. I've had a good one-liner there.

Or, maybe that was the shock talking.

For once, since this all happened, I shook like a leaf in a storm. This was not a situation I had been prepped for. House assault? Yeah. People dying? Never seen it in person, but yeah. Nukes going off? Not really, but dad used to talk about it. Crash land somewhere and have hundreds of red-eyed monsters shoot arrows at you? No. F.u.c.k.i.n.g. Way.

At least bullets would kill you before you knew what happened. I've seen enough TV to know that arrows hurt when you pull them out. I took a deep breath, pressed the rifle to my chest with its barrel up. I did not want to stick my head back out. I looked towards the ramp to see if I was even needed. Through the flashes, I could see a few marines pulled into the hull, unmoving. There were two other Marines, aside from the gunner, that had pulled whatever they could out to use as cover.

One just used a pile of little green... kids? They looked like kids, but when I saw the face...

"Goblins..." I muttered. Anyone who hadn't lived under a rock knew about goblins. A few stories colored them nice, a few colored them pure evil. None of that mattered because they were the ones attacking us. Even though they were dead, their eyes still faintly glowed in the moonlight. They looked like little demons with their grotesque faces.

"Okay, now or never, Kian..." I muttered as I pushed the rifle away. I hadn't actually looked at what he handed me. I stared down at the rifle, it was an M27 Infantry Automatic Rifle or IAR. While I wasn't versed with an M27, it was the same as a civilian AR; aside from the ability to be switched into fire modes.

I racked the charging handle, with force. Something was sticking the handle. I didn't want to think about what. A round flung out of the chamber and slapped my stomach before it fell; clattering against the floor. I gulped. Fear told me not to do it. Courage told me that I needed to fight. Sense told me either option would work and we'd all die - probably.