All You Need Is Kill

Eyebrows still knitted, the old man’s head traced an arc as it sailed through the sky. The shattered pieces of his jaw and neck painted the girl’s straw hat a vivid red. She didn’t realize what had happened. A javelin exits a Mimic’s body at twelve hundred meters per second. The old man’s skull went flying before the sound of the javelin had even reached us. She slowly looked up.

A second round sliced through the air. Before her large, dark eyes could take in the sight of her slain grandfather, the javelin ripped through her, an act of neither mercy nor spite.

Her small body was obliterated.

Buffeted by the blast, the old man’s headless body swayed. Half his body was stained a deep scarlet. The straw hat spun on the wind. My body recoiled. I couldn’t move.

A bloated frog corpse stood at the water’s edge.

This coast was definitely within the UDF defense perimeter. I hadn’t heard reports of any patrol boats being sunk. The base on the front was alive and well. There couldn’t be any Mimics here. A claim the two corpses lying beside me would surely have contested if they could. But they were dead, right before my eyes. And I, their one hope for defense, had just deserted the only military unit in the area capable of holding back this invasion.

I was unarmed. My knife, my gun, my Jacket-they were all back at the base. When I’d walked through that gate an hour ago, I’d left my only hope for defense behind. Thirty meters to the nearest 57mm gun. Within running distance. I knew how to fire one, but there was still the tarp to deal with. I’d never have time to get it off. Insert my ID card into the platform, key in my passcode, feed in a thirty kilometer ammo belt, release the rotation lock lever or the barrel won’t move and I can’t aim, climb into the seat, crank the rusted handle-fuck it. Fire, motherfucker! Fire!

I knew the power of a Mimic. They weighed several times as much as a fully geared Jacket jockey. Structurally they had a lot in common with a starfish. There was an endoskeleton just below the skin, and it took 50mm armor-piercing rounds or better to penetrate it. And they didn’t hold back just because a man was unarmed. They rolled right through you like a rototiller through a gopher mound.

“Fuck me.”

The first javelin pierced my thigh.

The second opened a gaping wound in my back.

I was too busy trying to keep down the organs that came gurgling up into my throat to even notice the third.

I blacked out.

7

The paperback I’d been reading was beside my pillow. Yonabaru was counting his bundle of confessions on the top bunk.

“Keiji, sign this.”

“Corporal, you have a sidearm, don’t you?”

“Yeah.”

“Could I see it?”

“Since when are you a gun nut?”

“It’s not like that.”

His hand disappeared into the top bunk. When it returned, it clutched a glistening lump of black metal.

“It’s loaded, so watch where you point it.”

“Uh, right.”

“If you make corporal, you can bring your own toys to bed and ain’t nobody can say a thing about it. Peashooter like this ain’t no good against a Mimic anyhow. The only things a Jacket jockey needs are his 20mm and his rocket launcher, three rockets apiece. The banana he packs for a snack doesn’t count. Now would you sign this already?”

I was too busy flicking off the safety on the gun to answer.

I wrapped my mouth around the barrel, imagining that 9mm slug in the chamber, waiting to explode from the cold, hard steel.

I pulled the trigger.

8

The paperback I’d been reading was beside my pillow. I sighed.

“Keiji, sign this.” Yonabaru craned his neck down from the top bunk.

“Sir, yes sir.”

“Listen. There’s nothin’ to tomorrow’s operation. Sweat it too much, you’ll turn into a feedhead-end up losing your mind before they even get a chance to blow your brains out.”

“I’m not sweating anything.”

“Hey man, ain’t nothin’ to be ashamed of. Everyone’s nervous their first time. It’s like gettin’ laid. Until you’ve done the deed, you can’t get it out of your head. All you can do is pass the time jerkin’ off.”

“I disagree.”

“Hey, you’re talkin’ to a man who’s played the game.”

“What if-just hypothetically-you kept repeating your first time over and over?”

“Where’d you get that shit?”

“I’m just talkin’ hypothetically is all. Like resetting all the pieces on a chess board. You take your turn, then everything goes back to how it started.”

“It depends.” Still hanging from the top bunk, his face lit up. “You talkin’ about fucking or fighting?”

“No fucking.”

“Well, if they asked me to go back and fight at Okinawa again, I’d tell ’em to shove it up their asses. They could send me to a fuckin’ firing squad if they want, but I wouldn’t go back.”

What if you didn’t have a choice? What if you had to relive your execution again and again?