NOVEL SIMPLE Pilot - After the Flash
War.
War never changes.
In the year 1945, my great-grandfather, serving in the army, wondered when he’d get to go home to his wife and the son he’d never seen. He got his wish when the US ended World War II by dropping atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
Now, in the year 2045, after the Resource Wars, I feel at my most vulnerable. WE, are at our most vulnerable. Some enemy, something, has attacked us. But, the thing is, we Americans have mastered the art of war. And if I know one thing, it’s that war never change-
“Dude get up and stop monologuing n’ shit. Do something useful and, oh I don’t know, shine my shoes, maybe. Just a thought.”
I looked over at my partner, Ryan. Ryan Garvey, to be exact. A huge fucking asshole and my best friend. He and I joined the army after he lost a bet that I wouldn’t manage to score that ten-out-of-ten goth baddie that we saw while walking home after a long hard day of drinking and driving, and a little bit of crashing. The crashing part happened before the drinking part, though. Ryan’s a drunk driver, not a drunk crasher.
“I’m not shining your shoes man. What do I look like to ya, a plantation worker?” I quipped back, with quite possibly the worst joke that had ever been uttered by a human being in the history of ever.
“That,” He began, slowly. “Is quite possibly, the BEST joke that has ever been uttered by a human being in the history of ever, my good man Alan” He walked up to me and slapped me on the back. “When did you get so gosh-freakin’ funny, dude? You’re like the master jokester out here, wherever HERE is.” He gestured around us after the word, ‘here’, in reference to the unfamiliar trees that surrounded us.
Alan is a nickname for Alaric, but I don’t tell anybody that because then I would be the punching bag of, well, everyone really. So, I just tell everyone to call me Alan,
“I don’t know, why not ask them?” I waved a hand at the bullet-ridden corpses on the ground.
Oh yeah, I forgot to mention them.
You see, way back in the good ol’ days, AKA about 10 minutes ago, Me and Ryan had been on a routine inspection of the Nicaraguan forest, ahem, I mean Lord Ryan Gartholomew Garvey the Thirds Royal Forest.
Why we there was just to make sure no weapons of mass destruction had somehow, inexplicably fallen into the hands of some random piss-poor opportunistic Central American freedom fighter, when a bright flash of light engulfed us, and then both me and Ryan found ourselves in a not-so-Nicaraguan-jungle.
As for how the corpses got there, well, that’s also kind of inexplicable. We had been hard at work trying to figure out where we were. With a lot of cursing, crying, and a little bit of swearing involved, we managed to make an outstanding leap from “someone help us” to “alright how do I shoot?”. But, we then got jumped by some odd-looking characters.
“Hey uh, dude, I swear I just heard something in the bushes” Ryan had said. I had thought he was playing around with me at first, so I was skeptical. But, before long, I saw a dark flash between the trees.
“Shit.” I muttered quietly. “What was that?”
“I don’t know.”
“Get back-to-back” I drew my rifle and aimed it around me, pressing my back to Ryan as he did the same. We slowly turned in a circle, watching all of our angles. Then, three figures in dark clothing jumped out at us.
The only thing that stopped us from immediately blasting them back to whatever cave they had crawled from was the very strange fact that they all had weird head decorations. One had cat ears, and the other two had what looked more like wolf ears. Then, they spoke.
Now, they didn't speak English, that’s for sure. And they also definitely didn’t speak Nicaraguan, or whatever the brave people of Nicaragua spoke. No, they instead spoke a language that sounded suspiciously like German, which is farther from Central America than even China. Probably. China’s next to Nigeria, right?
Ryan spoke in completely rational confusion, “Bro what?
Luckily for us, I had studied German in college, at least for a little, and was able to make out the general meaning of their goblin-speak.
“They want us to drop all our shit and let them take it,” I explained. That wasn’t really what they said, but it sounded a fuckton cooler than, ‘Yarrr, they said give them all our valuables and they won’t make us walk the plank, matey’.
“Tell them where they can stick their offer,” Ryan said toughly. I prepared to speak, but I stopped.
“Where should I tell them to stick it?” I inquired.
Ryan looked at me like I was King Stupid of Idiottown. “Where the fuck do ya think buddy? Use that god-given brain of yours!”
However, while we were distracted, the cosplaying bandits had used that moment to rush us. I turned just in time to see one of the wolf-eared ones rushing me with a small dagger that looked like it carried with it an extra-lethal dose of tetanus.
“Shit!” I yelped, then pulled the trigger on my rifle as fast as I could, sending the poor soul's dead body flying past me and slamming into his other friend, who had been rushing Ryan at the same time, and said other friend subsequently got filled with lead as well.
For some reason, when we turned our guns in a circle to look for the missing cat-eared fellow, he was nowhere to be seen.
“We need to return to base. Now.” I barked.
“Good idea. One small issue.”
“What?
“Which way is base?”
“...”
END OF PILOT
Hope you enjoyed this small snippet. I was gonna write more, but I couldn’t resist posting it to the public any longer. I’m in the process of writing more, hell, I might post another within a day. But, I just wanted to show yall who want more America Stranded content that you won’t have to wait much longer for it. Tell me what criticisms you have, and how I can improve. I’ll look at them, edit this part accordingly, then keep writing with the criticisms in mind. Thanks for reading!