All You Need Is Kill

I stepped inside. The air was stale. Rita’s smell was already fading from the room. Nothing had been moved from where we’d left it. The collapsed vinyl bag, coffee grinder, and portable range underscored just how short her stay here had been. They were the only traces she’d even been here. Almost everything else she owned was military-issue. The coffee set was the only personal belongings she had. Of course she hadn’t left me a note-that would have been too sentimental for the Full Metal Bitch.

The mug on the glass table still held the coffee Rita had made. I picked up the mug. The coffee was dark and still. It had cooled to room temperature days ago. My hands shook, sending tiny ripples across the jet black surface. This was how Rita had faced her solitude. Now I understood.

You were just a piece on the board, and I was the piece that replaced you. Nothing more than the false hero the world needed. And now this good-for-nothing world was going to push me across the same bloodstained, smoke-filled battlefield. But you never hated the world for what it did to you.

So I wouldn’t let the world lose. It could drop me into a field of Mimics with nothing but a tungsten carbide axe and a dying Jacket and I’d fight my way out. I’d march waist-deep in blood through more massacres than all the vets in the UDF had seen combined, and I’d emerge unscathed. I’d train until I knew the precise nanosecond to pull the trigger, the exact moment to take every step. I wouldn’t let a javelin so much as scratch the paint on my Jacket.

While I live and breathe, humanity will never fall. I promise you. It may take a dozen years, but I will win this war for you. Even if you won’t be here to see it. You were the only person I wanted to protect, and you were gone.

Hot tears threatened to fall from my eyes as I looked out through the cracked glass at the sky, but I wouldn’t cry. Not for the friends I would lose in the battles ahead. The friends I wouldn’t be able to save. I won’t cry for you until the war is finally over.

Through the warped window I saw the sky, crystal blue, seeming to stretch forever. A cloud drifted lazily along. I turned to face the window, and like a bone-dry sponge soaking up water, my body absorbed the clear boundless sky.

You hated being alone, but you kept your distance from the barracks, slept and woke in solitude, because it was too hard to face the friends you knew were going to die. Trapped in a cruel, unending nightmare, your only thoughts were for them. You couldn’t bear to lose even one of them, no matter who.

Red was your color, yours and yours alone. It should rest with you. I will paint my Jacket sky blue, the color you told me you loved when we first met. In a field of a million soldiers, I will stand out from all the rest, a lightning rod for the enemy’s attacks. I will be their target.

I sat there for some time holding the last cup of coffee she’d ever made, for someone she’d barely known. Its thin aroma stirred in me an insufferable longing and sadness. A small colony of blue-green mold bobbed on the surface of the coffee. Raising the cup to my lips, I drank.

Afterword

I like video games. I’ve been playing them since I was a snot-nosed kid. I’ve watched them grow up along with me. But even after beating dozens of games on the hardest difficulty mode, I’ve never been moved to cheer until the walls shake. I’ve never laughed, cried, or jumped up to strike a victory pose. My excitement drifts like ice on a quiet pond, whirling around somewhere deep inside me.

Maybe that’s just the reaction I have watching myself from the outside. I look down from above and say, “After all the time I put into the game, of course I was going to beat it.” I see myself with a shit-eating grin plastered on my face-a veteran smile only someone who’d been there themselves could appreciate.

The ending never changes. The village elder can’t come up with anything better than the same, worn-out line he always uses. “Well done, XXXX. I never doubted that the blood of a hero flowed in your veins.” Well the joke is on you, gramps. There’s not a drop of hero’s blood in my whole body, so spare me the praise. I’m just an ordinary guy, and proud of it. I’m here because I put in the time. I have the blisters on my fingers to prove it. It had nothing to do with coincidence, luck, or the activation of my Wonder Twin powers. I reset the game hundreds of times until my special attack finally went off perfectly. Victory was inevitable. So please, hold off on all the hero talk.

This is the sort of thing that went through my head while I was writing. Without the help of a great many people, this novel would never have made into this world. It’s a dark story, with characters dying left and right, but I’m happy with how it turned out.