Indian Hill 5: Into The Fire

Prologue

The Spring of Hope Has Been Frozen by the Iciness of Winter’s Desolation.

It has been five years since the Progerians came and not only fucked up my world but fucked up the world. I had gone to a Widespread Panic concert with my then girlfriend, Beth. I (along with every other concertgoer) was taken aboard their massive scout-ship, the Julipion, and forced into a gladiator-style tournament to the death.

I won every battle I fought; although how you can count killing another person as a win, or even the severe beatings I took, as victory, is beyond me. If not for the alien healing juice given to me, I would have succumbed to my myriad of injuries somewhere around half a dozen times. So you tell me who won. Add to that the fact that, after each fight, I was awarded spoils in the form of women. Yeah, that’s always a great idea; throw a plethora of women into the mix with only one man to be the focus of their attention. Don’t get me wrong, as an adolescent fantasy this would have been incredible, but in real life…not so much.

I was just about secondary in the equation. It wasn’t necessarily that the women wanted me, but rather they didn’t want anyone else to. Does that even make sense? It’s women; so I’m not really sure. It was more of a competition amongst themselves than any of them vying for my affections, save Debbie. She alone fell in love with me, and in all honesty, me with her. There were others I cared for greatly, including Stephanie, but every single one of them was secondary to Beth, who just happened to be the ultimate prize—The Queen of the Games. I was going to do everything in my power to get her back. Knowing what I know now, I wouldn’t have tried as hard. Who knew? I didn’t fight that final fight to get her back, not then anyway. I hatched this half-assed plan that had no chance of success, but I cannot even begin to tell you how good it felt to blast those reptilian beasts into whatever hell they have.

As luck would have it, Beth’s seat during the games was near the Progerian Supreme Commander, who immediately became my hostage. The Genogerians, who were guarding him, would not shoot at me for fear of hitting him. Worked just fine as far as I was concerned. There was sort of a détente as we bunched together in the alien hangar: myself, Beth, the Supreme Commander, twenty or so spoils, and half of the damn invasion soldiers. We were screwed. They wouldn’t shoot, but they also wouldn’t let us go.

It was the brave crew of the Space Shuttle Liberation that opened the door for us (literally!) when they exploded a huge nuclear device within the alien hold. We made it back to Earth, but the one person I had wanted most in the world wanted nothing to do with me. Beth had come to the realization that apparently something was wrong with me because of what I’d done on that arena floor. Somehow, she never pieced together that what I’d done, I’d done for her and the other women. Had I failed, they all would have fallen. It mattered little to her.

I did what anyone would do after having been falsely accused of being dead and losing their girlfriend. I went home. I met with my family and one of my best friends, Dennis, who pulled me aside to let me know Paul, another close friend, had started his own militia in Colorado and was also building a huge underground facility at our old stomping grounds—a place called Indian Hill.

At the time, I didn’t realize the man who had offered me a commission in the USMC was the same man who was a benefactor to Paul’s burgeoning army. General Burkhalter seemed to be hedging as many bets as he could for the oncoming invasion. I accepted the commission before going to seek Paul out. Paul’s reaction to seeing me was frosty to say the least. It was more like the returning Helen of Troy; I was considered more of a spy than an ally.

That was quickly proved to me when Paul shot me in the back with a tranquilizer and shipped me off to France. Who does that shit? Who shoots their friend and then sends him away? Especially to France! I knew the world was crazy before I’d gone, but somehow it had slipped even a little further into madness while I was away. People inherently knew the end was nigh I guess and were now letting it all hang out. Just my personal view.

I did some recovery in Paris after my surgery. And it seems I was a spy all along; the Progerians had apparently placed tracking devices inside of me. Not because they ever thought I’d escape, but it helped with the broadcasting of my whereabouts. Well, track me down they did. Before I could surrender, they laid waste the capital city of France. It seemed I was finally going to have that final battle with Durgan I’d so deftly avoided. He had been the number one seed in the games; and not just clinically insane—which sounds so antiseptic—he was fucking nuts, torturing his victims and spoils alike. I’d blown his leg off in my initial escape, and that had done little to abate his animosity towards me.

Somehow, I’d gained the upper hand on the asshole. Wait…maybe scratch that last sentence. Even though it’s technically right, it doesn’t sound good if taken literally. Screw it, the fight ended up with the heel of my boot crashing through his face…repeatedly. I think, at that moment, what little vestiges of humanity I’d been holding on to kind of went out the window. Crushing a man’s skull with your footwear will do that sort of thing. In a semi-sane world, that would have been it. I was now the last man standing in this deranged contest. I’d won. I should have been showered with gifts, money, and unending freedom. That was not to be. My prize for winning was to face off against the Genogerian champion, Drababan. Even Durgan in his steroid-induced alien juice-enhanced state could not compete with the chiseled granite that was Dee. It was like comparing a Chihuahua to a Rottweiler.

I had not come through my Durgan fight-fest unscathed. While I healed, Drababan often visited me. At first I thought he was trying that get to know your enemy type of thing. That was folly on my part; whatever made me think that he saw me a big enough threat was pure wishful thinking. Then I drifted over to the far side of that thought and was thinking that he just felt bad for me, like I was a little puppy he had to put down. But it wasn’t that either. Drababan was looking for something. I don’t want to say friend, but definitely a kinship. He was perhaps one of the most spiritual beings I had ever encountered, and I think maybe he wanted us to make a peace with him killing me. I couldn’t really oblige. We spent a lot of time together, the two of us. I got to know the being for what he was. He would mourn my passing, of that I had no doubt. He was still going to plant me, no doubt there either.

The Progerians had this all set up. We would fight in the crater that was once the location of the Eiffel Tower. It was to be broadcast live across the entire globe. The Progs wanted to show their superiority by having their champion beat the Earth champion. A demoralizing sentiment was what they were shooting for. Unbeknownst to me, Paul (yeah, the guy who had shot me in the back) had set up an escape plan.

Dee and I had squared off. He was putting on a big production of making my killing look honorable, when chunks of dirt from heavy explosions rained down on us. Before I knew what was happening, he had picked me up and was racing the both of us to freedom. He’d taken a few shots along the way, but his tough hide strode on. In a matter of hours we were on a sub heading back to the States, or at least the land mass formerly known as America.

Dee caused quite a stir on that sub, but nothing like the sergeant who had saved my ass. It was there I got to know the woman who had been in charge of getting me out of France, Tracy. It wasn’t love at first sight, mainly because I was riding on Dee’s shoulders as I was bumping on by, so maybe love at second or third sight might be more fitting. It was probably love at a hundred and seventy-sixth sight for her, but that was all right, I’d wait.

As we came up on the East Coast, it was revealed to me that the aliens had leveled Boston as a payback for my escape. My beloved city was gone. If I needed any hardening of my resolve, it lay in the embers that still smoldered.

We fought our way back to the Hill. I thought we’d lost Dee along the way in one of the battles. When we finally made it back to that giant underground bunker, I was reunited with my friends and family, something I thought would never come to pass. Then, soon enough, I had a dream-wrapped-in-a-nightmare happen…or maybe it was the other way around.

Dee had survived his encounter with the Genogerian shock troops, but he’d found Beth along the way and brought her to the Hill with him. As happy as I was to see Dee, the converse was true of Beth. She and Debbie apparently had been through one hell of an ordeal getting across the country. It was a story she would only lightly touch upon, even when I would press her for details of how Debbie had died. By this time, Tracy and I had become an item, and Beth was doing everything in her power to put an end to that, no matter how many times I told her we were over.

I’d come up with a new term for the woman Beth had become: an empathetic narcissist. She was completely wrapped up in how she felt.

She pushed me so far that I actually signed up for as close to a suicide mission as I could get when a Progerian-Genogerian hybrid came to our holdout. Apparently all was not well between Genos and Progs. The Genos were not necessarily happy with their lot in life, and with a little prodding, Urlack, former Troop Leader and half-Geno/half-Prog, was convinced we could get them to flip. It was a chance we had to take, seeing as we were getting slaughtered. This wasn’t a near extinction event; we were on the brink. They’d bombarded us back to the Stone Age.

So back to the Julipion I went for the third time, this time somewhat willingly. With the help of some of the bravest Genos, my new ally, Tantor, among them, we took that fucking ship. I’d love to say that was the end of the hostility, that Earth gradually healed and we went about our business rebuilding a new Utopia, one in which we’d learned our lessons. That is as far from the truth as could be.

Before we could stop it, the Julipion had gotten its signal about a habitable planet off to the other ships following it some distance away. We were now under the proverbial gun or racing the proverbial clock—pick either idiom you feel works better—as we awaited the heavy destroyer class ships’ arrival. We ramped up all the industry that we could, building as many fighters as possible in the time frame we figured we had allotted to us. Progerian, Genogerian, and humans worked side by side on the scout ship now designated the USS Guardian.

We’d have the element of surprise when they showed up because they would have no way of knowing we’d taken the ship, but that was it. We were outgunned according to what Iserwan, the Progerian pilot, told us about the ships that were coming. In the meantime, the majority of Genogerians had opted out of the upcoming war and were given swaths of land in which to start over. The problem with giving lifelong slaves their freedom without any guidance was that they now had no clue with what to do with themselves. It was sort of like letting sugar-crazed kids loose inside a Candy Is Us superstore without any supervision: total chaos. They did not have the necessary basic skills to run a civilization. They began to revert back to their old ways without too much nudging. As for the store, sadly none ever existed but how awesome would they have been?

I’d gone with Paul and Dee back to the USS Guardian as a photo op for when we rolled off the first wave of fighters we had produced. It turned south in a hurry; proximity alarms had begun to do what they invariably do, which is make an incessant noise destined to produce hearing loss. That first ship just showed up…one second there was empty space, the next it was filled with a gigantic war machine. We hit that thing with everything we could the moment it appeared. I’ll tell you what, the Progs may not be very good at diplomacy, but they are sure as shit good at war, I guess out of necessity due to their lack of the former trait. We cold-cocked them and they shrugged it off in seconds. Fighters filled the sky as did cannon fire, and the dreaded Breechers, troop-laden ships that ripped through hulls to deposit their payloads, were launched. The problem with our ship was that we were not at full capacity as this was a media blitz; a chance to show off, not go to war. We were understaffed and outmanned, so to speak. I grabbed what contingent I could and headed to where the first of the Breechers was attempting to dock.

We met them head on and got our asses handed to us by Mutes. When the dust settled, Tantor and a bunch of other good soldiers lay dead. Oh yeah, I forgot to explain the Mutes. These were genetically altered Genogerians—apparently Progs didn’t think Genos were scary enough on their own. Instead of retreating and regrouping, I rushed towards the Breecher that was stuck to our ship like a fat tick. We overpowered the pilot who seemed more surprised at our audacity than the guns we leveled on him. Dee and I got aboard that other ship and were once again able to get the Genos to rebel against their oppressors. The fight was bloody and brutal; luckily it was short as well. We wrested control of the controls and forced the ship into capitulation.

Paul and I were on shaky ground for a variety of reasons, as he felt that just my mere presence was a threat to his power. I was, of course, the almighty Talbot. I’m not that big of a megalomaniac, I’m just saying that’s obviously what was going through his head, no matter how many times I tried to explain to him I wanted nothing to do with his job, and that I was perfectly content to stay at home with my son. Then there was the whole Beth angle. After I spurned Beth, she did the next best thing she thought she could do to manipulate me. She married my best friend.

As bad as I felt for him getting saddled with her, I was happy to mistakenly believe she was off my radar for good. Paul, on some level, knew why she’d done what she’d done; he just chose to ignore that part and then blame me when his psychotic wife made eyes at me. I think the final straw was when Iserwan had come over to pilot our newly captured ship. He’d decided that the only way we could survive was for him to take this ship and ram it headlong into the buckling, a form of space travel, as the new ship arrived, thus destroying both. Paul had wanted to add this ship to his growing armada, not send it off on a kamikaze run. With the destruction of the new ship came the tipping of the scales. We were officially on the outs, which was fine with me. I knew what was coming, I was going to enjoy as much time with my family and Dee as I could before the end rained down on us. The two ships destroyed were only the vanguard. More were on the way.

I was on my self-imposed vacation at home when Beth came to visit. Yeah, Tracy was a big fan of that. Beth had come to tell me that Paul was going to bomb the Geno uprising into extinction. I grabbed Dee and we went out west, some shithole in Arizona as a matter of fact, in an attempt to head off disaster. It didn’t work out quite as we had planned. (Okay, not quite as good as I had planned. FINE, you’ve read enough of these journals to know by now that I’ve yet to have a well formed plan. I was reacting by gut instinct.) It was my strong voice that had allowed the Genos to settle on Earth, and now they were tearing everything up. Part of it was that I wanted to mitigate the damage they were causing, as they still had the potential to be an incredible ally…oh, and I also didn’t want to be the man responsible for the deaths of hundreds of thousands of humans. Yeah, that last piece played a part for sure.

I had to kill an adolescent Genogerian to prove my worthiness in the Genos’ eyes; basically just another useless death. A life cut short for the pursuit of pride. Made about as much sense as dying for the pursuit of peanut butter, but at least if you succeeded here you had the reward of the tasty food. Pride looks sweet, but trust me, it is always bitter. I had gotten the best of the young Geno, but he had gotten his own licks in. I did not know how many until I nearly died back at my home from internal bleeding. While I was at the hospital in an induced coma, Paul basically ordered Tracy to lead the charge against a raging horde of Genos that, as of yet, couldn’t be stopped. If I’d been awake, I would have beaten him to within an inch of his life for sending her on a mission that had about a zero percent chance of succeeding at the time. Again, outmanned and outgunned without air support or an exit strategy, pretty much summed up the war effort thus far. Yup, that was my best friend there, doing his best to kill my wife.

When I awoke and saw Dee standing guard over my bed, I knew something bad was up. When he told me, I convinced the doctors to shoot me up with the alien go-go juice, and then I made Dee break his promise to Tracy and allow me to follow her. I entrusted my flesh and blood in the form of Travis to Dee’s care, and then I went in pursuit of my tough-as-nails wife, who somehow found a way to battle the warring brutes.

I was dropped off in the shell of L.A. Although, to be honest, it sort of looked the same as it did when it was standing. I was never a fan of that city, and my initial contact with the inhabitants was seemingly not going to change that feeling. The world is at war, barely holding on, I’m doing my best to at least die by my wife’s side, and I get fucking waylaid by a street gang. Just your garden-variety street gang, or so I thought. They didn’t outright kill me, which was good. When the leader recognized me for who I was, he decided to allow me to throw in my lot with them. Sure beat a bullet to the head. The surprises did not end there. They’d been busy building a huge wall against the advancing Genos. I did not know then how they could have known where the Genos were coming; I’d learn that soon enough. When we saw the expanding ribbon of the advancing army, my heart sank. There was no way my wife’s unit could have survived that. Nothing could survive that. Though my heart was black and bleak, I was going to make the Genos pay in blood. It would not quench the thirst of my dry heart, but it would help.

Then the gang-leader, BT, surprised me again. They pulled out these railguns that looked straight out of a science fiction movie. He was very evasive in his answering of where they’d got them. I didn’t give a shit, I just wanted to shoot one; he wouldn’t let me. It was a slaughter. From our high vantage point, and a longer weaponry effective range, we didn’t just paint the ground in blood, we saturated it. For the first time since they’d gone on the move, we’d stopped them. (It was a short-lived victory, as they would change tactics the next day, but it was a victory nonetheless.)

Then, what I didn’t think could happen did, we realized that someone was harrying the Genos from behind with some seriously large guns, tanks, and rocket grenades to be exact. I knew without a doubt it was Tracy. It had to be. I would have known if my soul mate been ripped from my side had she passed, I was positive of it.

If I could have gone through the Genos to find out for sure, I would have, but a reunion would have to wait. As the Genos came after us with everything they had, BT once again pulled a magic rabbit out of his hat in the form of a bomb that was most certainly of alien technology. It laid a devastating blow to the Genos, stopping them, at least for the time being, literally dead in their tracks. If nothing else, the Genos are relentless. The next day, they came again and again, crashing against our wall until we capitulated the ground. BT and I barely escaped our full on retreat. Once the tide of Genos passed, we came out from our hiding spot. After my so sweet meeting with my wife, the real problem reared its ugly head.

We knew the Genos were heading for the fighter factory, and we needed to get there and warn them of the impending danger. Rut, Tracy’s crazy driver, took us there with a speed that nearly finished off what Paul, Beth, the Genos, and the Progs had been trying to do…which was kill us, if I didn’t make that abundantly clear. The factory was a ruse; it was set up to look like it was functioning, but it was all an elaborate trap. For what purpose we did not know until a thermonuclear device was discovered hidden in a storage closet. That was all the convincing I needed to get as far away as possible, yet we couldn’t as there were towns in the blast zone and we had to warn them. We had mixed results—some believed us while others wanted us dead. Rut paid the ultimate price, BT was wounded and out of the fight. We were most certainly staring doom in the face, and then, as if it couldn’t have gotten worse, it did. This came in the form of the Stryvers, technically our allies, or (more likely) enemies of our enemies. On my worst acid trip, I could not have imagined that such a thing existed as every fiber of my being was repulsed by them. I was torn between wanting to run and blowing large holes into their hairy, multi-armed bodies.

The shock when I’d first seen the Genogerians had nothing on what the Stryvers ripped from my psyche. It is still unclear to me at this point who started the flashpoint with the Genos. Could have been my old buddy Paul, who, when I saw him next, was at least going to receive a black eye and a potentially busted fucking nose. He wanted the Genos gone, and inciting a riot would have given him the clearance and justification to eradicate them. Beth was still a suspect, maybe not directly, as I don’t think she had the clout to pull it off up front, but I’m sure she could have twisted Paul’s knots hard enough to get him to do it. The reason, you ask? Why, to get my beautiful bride up on the frontlines while I was busy elsewhere. That would be more than enough reason for her.

Maybe I could give the power couple matching broken noses, the satisfaction would be beyond respite. I still had to contend that there was a discontented contingent in our quote-unquote allies: the Progerians that had defected. They gained the most by an all-out Geno revolt. Or, quite possibly, it was my newest set of friends, the Stryvers. The nightmare creatures were hell bent on destroying the Progerians at the cost and expense of all and everything around them. Planets, people, civilizations, meant naught to them. As long as Progerians died, that was the ultimate goal. And what of this being? The fear they induced just looking at them made everything within me quake in response. They only spoke through telepathy, and by some stroke of misfortune I could pick up on multiple frequencies. So, when they thought they were only communicating amongst themselves, I was listening in. On one side, when they spoke to us—myself, BT, and Tracy—they professed their desire to help, but when I delved into their deeper conversations, they talked about killing us, or at least my traveling companions. If I was to believe them, then Paul had departed to parts unknown, and the Progerians were moments away from invading our airspace. I guess that made me a general, or shit, I was now emperor of the world, and what a world to inherit.

We were just digging out from under our latest assault, we were at war on the ground with the Genogerians and the Progerians in the air, our new friends could not be trusted, and so it goes on…

Chapter 1

CHAPTER ONE – MIKE JOURNAL ENTRY 1

We’d been flying for what seemed like hours, impossible to tell as there was no timing mechanism that I could discern. BT was in a fitful sleep, tossing and turning as much as his restraints would allow. Tracy was next to me, nearly in a stupor. The Stryvers had a way of psychically suppressing our fight-or-flight reflex or possibly the fear response; maybe both if they are different things. From time to time one of the things looked over at me with what I figured was a look of confusion. I tried my best to act calm, but I was as nervous as I’d ever been, and I think they were picking up on that.