Sharing Sunday – In a Post-Alien Raid World

We have a repeat Sharing Sunday Dreamer in the mix. Andy has been all too kind to let me hound him for another story and here it is. I love what goes on in his brain, even if I don’t feel the same while editing things of his! Enjoy. Ps his title is a work in progress, don’t judge. Also leave him some feedback in the comments, he’ll get a kick out of that.

In a Post-Alien Raid World

In post-raid world life went to hell. Oh sure there were a few remote places, edges of the earth, that had barely been touched. They retained civilisation, government, freedom—but the rest of the world? Survival of the fittest. No one lived to a ripe old age anymore, the weak were dog chow, the feeble pig food. Conditions that had once been treatable, that could be managed, were now death sentences. Epilepsy, diabetes, autism, schizophrenia, biological and psychological disorders could no longer be accepted because they slowed you down, slowed everyone down. It had become a dog eat dog world—the shanty towns were the worst, the antithesis of order, of civilisation.

Refugee camps built along the Canadian border, millions of people crammed into spaces not even designed to hold a tenth of that. The Canadian Alliance did their best to help those people, but their resources were stretched thin as it was. The best they could do was provide regular food and medical drops—they had to rely on the citizens of those towns to form organisation of their own, to distribute the food and supplies. There was a reason socialism had collapsed.

People were greedy, vengeful and they horded power at every opportunity. Criminal syndicates, corrupt ‘governments’ controlled the towns and the people did their best to survive in a harsh world order. For some it was easier than others, as time passed, as years became decades and those temporary camps became permanent homes a new generation was born and raised. They knew no other life, no other way.

They survived by their wits, and strength. They thought on their feet, moved quickly, and didn’t let themselves became bogged down by sentimentality or emotion. It was very nearly a generation of sociopaths, more ruthless than those who had come before them they rose through the ranks, seized control of the towns and… nothing changed. The new boss was the same as the old.

In many ways the shanty towns were reminiscent of the old west; lawless, frontier territory. There were opportunities for the right kind of people, wealth to be acquired if one was bold enough, smart enough or reckless enough. For everyone else? It was about survival—day to day.

Abby grew up rough on the streets, she learned to fight young and learned to fight hard. She may have been an underweight scrapper but she made a reputation for herself in certain corners of the town and fought damn hard to keep it. For young pretty women there weren’t many options; it was either turn to whoring or become a glorified whore by finding a powerful man to protect them. Her sister had gone that way, had hooked up with a small time criminal figure who aspired to become a Territory Boss She lived in a mansion—relative to everyone else. She had more than enough food, shelter, safety; she even had wine. Old world vintages, not the toilet swill the rest of the shanty town drank.

Abby often wondered if the crude 50+ swill the town manufactured was part of the syndicates plan to keep the rest of the population from rising up against them.

Perpetual drunkenness meant nobody cared anymore, and those that did? Didn’t have the will to complain. It also made them easy victims when the time came.

Abby had loftier plans for her life than being a whore, a drunk, or dead in a gutter. It was recruitment day. Twice yearly the Canadian Alliance sent recruiters through the shanty towns, anyone over sixteen had the option to enlist in the Allied Forces—a worldwide military initiative formed by the five major powers that now governed the earth. Supposedly there had been a time when there were hundreds of nations, maybe even thousands, vying for power with ever shifting politics and alliances. She didn’t know if that was true, but she knew that now there were only five nations on earth. Cobbled together from the remnants of the old world. They were seeking to build a unified military, no longer disparate entities, but a singular force for the betterment and development of mankind. Not that Abby cared about the lofty ideals or political motivations. Enlistment meant safety, it meant three meals a day, it meant shelter and clean clothes and getting the hell out of the shanty town.

Her sister had been killed two years ago in a syndicate restructure. Her ‘lover’ had sold her off to earn himself brownie points with an up and comer. She had been gang raped, broken down and left in one of the whore dens where any man with a coin to his name could take his turn. Abby had only learned the truth after her sister was dead. The same day she had made her reputation.

She had taken out a syndicate man, and she had put the fear of the atom into his men—once mankind had worshipped all powerful deities, gods in pantheons and singular, beings that allegedly governed the world. After the raid those gods were discarded in favour of a new power—science—technology, progress and innovation. Many believed it was the gods who had abandoned the people of the earth. Abby didn’t know what she thought, not really, but she swore her life by the atom. Not by any god.

Abby’s actions had earned her reputation in the syndicate and for reasons she couldn’t fathom they had let her get away with it. No retribution, no black bag in the middle of the night or march down Main Street. Rumours said she had been used, that the syndicate had aimed her like a loaded a gun and pulled the trigger. They had wanted their own man dead, but they had wanted their hands clean of the affair. It didn’t matter. She had her vengeance and she lived.

Now it was recruiting day.

The central square, a large section of town that had been carved into the earth and roughly cemented over—it was the largest clear space in a town where buildings were piled on top of each other. At the centre of the square a woman sat at a small table with a tablet in front of her, to either side of her she was flanked by two men in black leather uniforms that strapped across their chests. A blue glow emanating from the sleek comps attached to their wrists. The two men looked wary, ready to strike at anyone or anything—it wouldn’t be the first time a recruiter had been attacked, although the syndicate usually made an effort to keep the rougher elements away from the recruiters. It was in their best interests if the recruiters were in and out, one day, twice a year and a few hapless souls taken away. Rumours abounded about the recruiters and the allied forces, nasty, terribly things were said to be done to the soldiers who enlisted. Abby suspected those were just more rumours spread by the syndicate to keep people in line, keep them from flocking to leave the shanty towns.

A half dozen young men and two women waited in line—waited for the recruiter. She interviewed each of them, it was a brief conversation, before she snapped a bio of them—just general health information Abby suspected, make sure they weren’t diseased or infirm.

One of the men was rejected, Abby recognised him. Adam. His family had a history of heart problems, the scan must have revealed it and made him an undesirable candidate. He looked crushed by the rejection. It had no doubt been his only way out of the town. Hell it was the only way anyone got out short of dying.

“Name?” Abby started, she had let herself get carried away in her thoughts, now she had to scramble to make a good impression. The recruiter was in her mid-thirties; trim, fit, sleek black hair tied back and folded up, her green eyes were penetrating, but she had a warm, reassuring, smile. “It’s ok, there’s no need to be nervous.” She assured Abby, “What’s your name?”

“Abby, I mean Abigail Dreslin ma’am,”

“Well Abby, just hold still. This won’t hurt.” The woman raised her wrist and waved her comp slightly, the light it emitted fluctuated over Abby, and the recruiter smile as she glanced at the screen. “A little underweight, but you’re in remarkably good health Abby. Welcome to the Allied Forces.”

Events moved quickly from there, Abby moved off to a small group of accepted recruits and within an hour they had packed up the station and were proceeding towards the exit zone. She couldn’t believe she was actually on her way out. It had been the one thought that had sustained her through a lifetime of misery and barbarity, of pain and heartache. She still couldn’t believe it—there were a glimmer of disbelief, that it was a mistake, a trick, a cruel jest orchestrated by the syndicate. Speaking of… Abby caught movement out of the corner of her eye. She couldn’t have said what it was exactly but shivers ripped down her spine and a life time of honed survival instincts kicked in. A soft click, barely audible, reached her and Abby moved.

Faster than she had ever moved in her life, she tackled the recruiter as a hail of gun fire ripped across the lane. Three of the other recruits were shredded and the two security personnel hit the ground hard. She didn’t know if they were hit or whether they had just dropped awkwardly. It didn’t matter. The cross fire had been the first stage of the assault.

A man in ripped leather and denim stepped free of one of the massacred walls, an old world ak47 in his hands. It may have looked like an antiquated piece of retlak, but it was still a lethal weapon and so simple an idiot could use it. The man unclipped something from his belt and Abby went cold, it was a coldstream grenade. One of the pieces of alien tech that had become fairly common place with disreputable groups—criminals—it was easy to manufacture, and lethal. It had an expanded radius, it gripped like napalm, and the fire was cold. It was impossible, but the fire burnt cold, ice heat, and once it had you? You were laked.

Abby had seen a man from the ‘wars’ who had survived a coldstream blast. He wished he hadn’t—right up until the day he put the barrel of a shotgun in his mouth and splattered his own brain matter across the street. Long story short—coldstream was bad news.

The man wrenched his arm back and Abby very calmly drew the sidearm from the recruiter’s holster, levelled it and pulled the trigger. It was one of the new model jerichos, zero recoil, barely any sound. Abby wasn’t even sure it had fired until the hole appeared in the man’s head, he sunk to his knees and she saw he had already hit the detonator—he was going to fall forward, the grenade was going to roll straight towards them.

The recruiter stirred under Abby, dazed from the tackle, the two soldiers were also moving. It looked like they had taken multiple shots each but their armour had absorbed them. They were all moving too slowly. There were three more recruits still alive, the ones who had been shot? Who knew… not to mention the civilians nearby. A coldstream grenade would eat through the street, maybe half the block. Abby cursed her life, cursed the wretched existence she had been born into as all of that raced through her mind. She hurled herself off the recruiter just as the grenade hit the ground. She threw herself forward—crushed the assailant under her and used his body and her own as a flesh shield against the bomb. There was a small chance she could contain the blast, at the very least it would be focused down and limit the damage.

Abby breathed out—nothing happened. She wondered if it had already gone off, if she was dead and just didn’t realise it yet. She heard a half dozen shots being exchange, a strangled cry and finally a hand touched her shoulder. She looked up into the warm green eyes of the recruiter and she sighed, it was frustration, relief, it was a sigh of everything pent up inside of her. The recruiter pulled her to her feet and kicked the dead man’s body over to reveal the grenade—her jaw dropped at the crystallised shards encompassing it. It was a one in a million misfire of the coldstream, one in a million…

The recruiter brushed Abby down with one hand, as she drew a second weapon from an ankle holster Abby hadn’t even seen.

“We need to move,” the recruiter said firmly.

They moved.

Two of the potential recruits were dead. They were left where they had fallen while the third was picked up and thrown over the shoulder of the largest recruit. Chester, Abby thought. He was vaguely familiar from the lower side districts, a butcher or a baker maybe… she wasn’t sure. They crossed the lanes without being further accosted. That may have had something to do with the six bodies the soldiers had left in their wake. The initial attack may have taken them by surprise, but they had responded with lethal fortitude. It couldn’t have been an ordered hit. The syndicate adamantly opposed such fool hardy action, they wanted the Allied Forces to keep out of their businesses and so they worked very hard to make sure they stayed out of the Allied Forces way.

But still… planned attacks like that one? They were rare. Fringe groups usually with some idiotic philosophical or religious ideologies, but they usually struck in the threes. A backup for their backup. So where were the other two attacks? In less than a minute Abby and the others would cross into the neutralisation zone. Walls ten feet thick, isolation, protection, a coldstream splicer couldn’t punch through those walls.

The door opened, it was a small hatch in the side of the mammoth wall, and they crossed through un-accosted. It was only a casual glance back as the door was closing that answered Abby’s questions. A young woman veiled in punk black, assassin-chic. She had dropped the veil masking her mouth to reveal a savage unrepentant smile, she saluted with a sleek bloody blade and Abby knew those other two attacks had been lying in wait and they had met a brutal end. Nirvana—syndicate assassin extraordinaire—and Abby’s ex.

Nirvana blew her a kiss as the door sealed behind her.

Nirvana was complicated. She was a few years older than Abby, and a ruthless killer. Not sadistic, or psychopathic—maybe a little bit of sociopath—but she was ruthless. Quick, efficient, clean and she had a one hundred percent success rate. No one she had ever been sent after had lived to tell the tale, it was the reason she was the Syndicate’s pride and joy. She was also Abby’s ex. They had met two years before after Abby’s little murder spree in the name of her sister. After that Abby had been fragile, the things she had done had left a mark on her emotionally and psychologically—she didn’t regret them but they had nearly broken her.

Nirvana had put the pieces back together. Taken her in, taught her to deal with what she had done—before teaching her a whole new skill set. Nirvana had honed her as a killer, had ingratiated her with the syndicate even though she hadn’t been a member. It had become a charmed life for a time… but somewhere along the line Abby had become whole and healthy again, she had loved Nirva, but she had also needed to move past the world she was born into. She aspired to greater things. The day she told Nirvana what she was planning had been the hardest day of her life, then she had asked her to come.

The problem was Nirvana loved her life, loved the shanty town, loved her place among the ruins, she loved the ruthless cut throat world she lived in and she thrived on the monstrous things she did to survive. There was something dark in her nature, primal, unrepressed and unrepentant—it was part of what Abby loved about her. That darkness was a void which had drawn her in, it had let her push past the things she had done because Nirvana didn’t judge, didn’t find her wanting, or monstrous. She had accepted what she had done, she accepted death wrought by Abby’s hands… just as she had accepted her decision to leave.

Although there had been a moment—a look in Nirvana’s eyes—when Abby thought she would ask her to say. Nirvana may have been a ruthless killer but she loved Abby too, it was deep, painful, and watching Abby leave was going to tear her up. She had seen it, had felt it… and atoms she wished she could stay. Wished she could be content with life in the shanty. She could have lived with Nirva, in the shanty’s version of a luxury suite—there was even a clean water swimming pool. Clean water was ridiculously hard to come by and the Syndicate wasted an entire pool of it just for swimming. It had felt sacrilegious, such decadence, when she had dipped a toe in the water. She had actually screamed when Nirvana pushed her in, but the clean water on her skin… bliss.

The point was she could have been provided for, could have separated herself from the refuse of the shanty and lived a more than charmed life, Nirvana would have provided for her till the end of her days. A house wife they had called it in the old world, she could have done anything, or nothing—but she wanted out. She needed out. She needed to exist in a world where there was still a glimmer of hope. The Allied Forces may not have been perfect but they were a chance.

The door to the bunker-wall shut with a clang and Nirvana was gone, leaving Abby staring at the stark grey wall that separated her from the shanty. She had never been inside the wall before, she had never even met anyone who had been inside so she’d had no idea what to expect. Turns out it was a six foot wide by seven foot concrete tunnel that ran so far she couldn’t see the other side. A soft glow emanated from lights fixed through the walls and the recruiter set a brisk pace. It felt like an eternity as they passed through the wall, half a mile at least of concrete—half a dozen blast doors—before they emerged into a room the size of a small clearing. The blast door slid in place behind them and Abby found herself impressed. The room was white, sterile. There were ‘clean’ places, hygiene zones, in the shanty. But apparently there was clean and then there was clean.

The entire shanty was covered in grime, scorches and ever present dirt that clogged the pours and blotted the skin. It was a fact of life and one she had been born accustomed to. Seeing an entire room with none of the trade mark grime marking it’s walls, no blood, or excrement, no damage or range inexplicable damage or corrosion. It was going to take her a minute to adjust. Not that she had a minute.

“Strip.” One word from the recruiter. She motioned at their clothes and Abby swallowed, she wasn’t a prude, but she had her modesty. The recruiter motioned to the wall on the right, a wall that grew transparent as a door whooshed open, revealing a shower room. “Clothes in the chute to the right,” the recruiter added.

The men stripped down quickly, they were a little underfed—except for the baker who was muscle as far as the eye could see—but they had no problem were stripping down. Abby was a little slower and she tried to keep her under garments intact, apparently that was a no go since the recruiter gave her a stern look. Reluctantly Abby exposed herself and quickly stepped into the other room where steam rose off the floor and torrents of harsh prickling water exploded from every wall, the sides, above and below. She was being hosed down from every angle, her skin rubbed raw and burnt. One of the men cried out at the pressure but Abby bit her lip and took it. It didn’t last long.

“The vestiges of your old lives are gone, your clothes, your belongings are gone.” The recruiter stated, Abby could have sworn the woman’s smile was directed at her as she began to hand out basic uniforms. “Welcome to the Allied Forces.”

About the Dreamer

Andrew  has been writing for decades. In fact he still has a note book from his third year of primary school which contains one of his oldest stories. Does it surprise you to learn that short story is entitled the Vampire Chronicles Six? Of course there were no preceding stories, for some reason in my child like state I thought six was a good place to begin. Check more from Andy at his site.