Mirage

//One: Afternoon Airdrop

There are many Plague Species that have inflicted countless years of terror across Occupied Space. Countless lives and amounts of monetary damages has been inflicted over the course of the last three hundred thousand years. Despite this, one single Plague Species is responsible for more death and destruction than almost all others combined.

Abandoned buildings had always just sort of...called to me. Since I was a kid, I had always been fascinated by the rotten mobile home at the end of my street, the brick house quietly falling apart about a mile and a half from my house, or even the old Ford car left in the weeds, also at the end of my street. If I could point to where that bug had first bitten me, I would blame it on Diesel Frost Gaming releasing their first title, way back when. It was one of the first true survival shooters that I had ever played and many days were spent in split screen with stock M4's, trying to traverse a very dangerous game world with a magazine of 5.56 across the four of us. I can recall many late nights, cowering in fear with a shotgun in the bathroom stall of a metro station, hearing the monster's approaching me with blood lust in their growls, and the promises of being reinforced by my three younger siblings. Then I was usually promptly mauled by whatever critter had pinned me to begin with, and the scraps of gear I had would be taken by my so called family and sold back to me. Many late nights were spent in the little corner of our dining room, playing the game because we couldn't sleep from the heat, since we were too broke to afford a real central air. Lasko box fans with a hundred thousand miles on the motor, stuffed into an open window to pull fresher, cooler night time air through the house helped to set the stage for many an after dark raid on some of the game's most dangerous areas. The volume was always down low to keep from waking up our parents, but our bickering over who did the most work and should get the best equipment usually did. If we weren't wasting our time playing the game, we were wasting our time outside. We lived in a remote area, and so the former owners of our house had left behind some animal pens. These pens were quickly retro fitted by us into the most luxurious of post apocalyptic dwellings, complete with an only moderately leaky roof. Many days were spent in the rain in old M81 woodland BDU's purchased with birthday money from a York store and belt fed machine guns made of scrap wood and spent casings of whatever caliber's we could pick up at the range without Dad seeing, or using VHS tapes or large pieces of wood as P90's as we traveled across Occupied Space via Stargate.

Growing up on the Universal Wall was the best childhood kids like us could have asked for. Many, many days were spent with radio in hand exploring the deep woods around our house, looking to see if we could find anything valuable. Sometimes we could hear rolling gunfights between travelers and Insurrectionists late at night. It was pretty scary when we were younger, but as we all got into our teenage years, and started taking the combat classes that everyone on the Universal Wall were required to take, they became less so. It was even less of a deal these days, with two of us having real military experience, and the other two of us having dealt with squads of Blacksuits on more than one occasion. Yet, some days I reminisce about our first real, life or death gunfight with a band of six of them, full auto's vs bolt guns seems like a clear cut fight on paper. Scary stuff, but we walked away from the battle with all kinds of cool loot, did get chewed out by our dad about doing stupid shit when we got home though.

The itch to explore abandoned building's never did leave me, even now, when we were supposed to be traveling, we had stopped to check out a small residential area off the big highway we had been following for some time. The reason wasn't so much the desire to explore new places, as it was from hunger. We had run out of food some days ago, and with summer using the very last of its energy to breathe the hottest days of the year into the water vapor that made up the atmosphere of the UW, water that we could actually drink was running low as well. The first house we decided to check out seemed to have been abandoned purposely with intent to return, but that return had never happened, for whatever the reason. The front lawn of the white two story brick rambler was well overgrown, appearing to be a foot high in some places. Other landscaping had clearly remained untended for a long while, and a death ivy that may at some point had been decorative had taken over the majority of the western side of the house. As we approached the front door, we split into two teams, myself and Ghost on one, Hornet and Fish on the other. We stacked up on opposite sides of the door, myself and Hornet watching the door, with Ghost and Fish watching our six. Hornet looked towards me, giving me a silent nod that he was going to try the door first to see if it was unlocked. He tried the knob, the door creaked open ever slightly, just enough I could peak inside. I checked the area around my feet, then stepped around the side of the door, Ghost backing up to take my place. I lowered my DMR, digging a can of silly string out of my chest rig. I pulled the cap off and gave the can a good, vigorous shake, spraying it liberally inside the door frame. The string floated slowly to the ground, none of it seeming to hang up on anything. I capped the can and stuck it back in my rig, nodding to Hornet and stepping back, pulling my last Stingball out of my kit. As common as candy bars in store checkout lines, Stingball grenades could be had from just about any outdoor store on the Universal Wall. They were essentially flashbangs, but angrier. In addition to a light bright enough to turn your walls white and a bang loud enough to make your ears bleed, it also shot off about 36 small rubber balls. Not enough to much more than break the skin, but if one went off close enough to you it could certainly put you on the ground. Ghost and Fish flipped around when they heard me pull the pin. I nodded to Hornet and he gave the door a good shove open with the stock of his Bren 2. The door way flung open to reveal a hallway leading into a large great room with two door way's off to the side. I chunked the flash bang down the hallway, stepping back into formation quickly. When the banger went, Hornet funneled in first, followed by Ghost, then Fish and finally myself. Hornet and Ghost split off into the two rooms adjacent to the hallway, while Fish and I continued to the great room. Upon entering the great room, I learned that the great room split off into a kitchen on the left side, and a dinning room on the right. A quick survey of all three rooms said that they had been abandoned for sometime, but the house having been properly secured, minus a locked door, of course. Fish had peeled off towards the kitchen, and I towards the dining room.