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The night sky was lit by the flash from the mass of missile launchers all around the perimeter. The air was rocked with an earth shattering explosion. The White House had been blown to small pieces of blackened burning wood. A loud cheering echoed throughout their ranks at this glorious sight. It might have something to do with the fact that the President herself had been seen running through its halls seconds before the missiles struck. Soon after this massacre members of the Drug Factions leveled both the Senate and the House of Representatives. The months that followed through the entire country in a swirling mass of chaos. Complete anarchy ruled as towns died while riots broke out. The once unified United States of America become to slow rip apart at the seems as the fifty states began fighting over the increasing high price of crossing into another state to buy and sell goods.The country was plunged into a modern equilvalent of the Dark Ages of Europe. Books were burned, people killed, and religious factions sprung up all over the South to offer the lost in these trying times. The number of suicides tripled in one year, as people began to believe that it was the end of the world prophecised in the Holy Bible. Since the Federal Government wasn't around to pay them or supervise their actions, all branches of the military dissolved into the history books. Something needed to be done to stop the rapid decline of the United States into a weak defenseless land open on all sides to attack Several terrorists attacks wiped out Los Angeles, New York, Miami, and Houston before action was agreed upon. A small member of the new political elite decided to make sure that democracy didn't go the way of the dinosaurs. It was comprised of Chief Justices, Senators, Representatives, Cabinet Members and Military leaders that had survived the coming of the Drug Factions. They started calling themselves the High Council of the Shattered States of America. They decided among themselves who was going to make the laws and they these new laws would be enforced. This arguement would last for years, as the military leaders wanted to bomb Drug Faction outcroppings in the remain big cities while the Senators and Representatives wanted to see if there was an easier way to deal with them short of leveling every last city and completely obliterating the rest of the population. Finally a decision was reached, called the Great Compromise of 2043. But there was still one problem remaining. How to deal with the Drug Factions that held the former nation's capital in a grip of iron. An amedment was ratified giving the police forces complete control over their particular state. Martial Law was strictly enforced allowing the various police forces to use any means necessary to stop the members of the Drug Factions. Battles raged, towns become more and more alien as missile impacts leveled builidings while killing a good number of the remaining citizens. Just when it looked the bleakest for the Police, they came roaring back strong with a steel-toe boot to the face.
Darik drives his vehicle along these war-torn streets. It reminds him of some pictures he saw as a child. They were from a distant place called Bosnia-Herzegovina where an Olympic field had been used to bury all the bodies of the fallen. He scans the surrounding buildings from his comfortable pressurized cabin. The seals on the doors are so tight, he can't even smell the massive burnt decay. He keeps in close contact with Central, radioing his position every twenty minutes. Finally he arrives at sector 5673, the toppled remains of the Washington Monument. The top of it had been sheared off by a crashing government helicopter as the pool before it is nothing more then a repository for broken glass, shattered stone, rotting corpses, sewage from busted pipes all swimming in a massive pool of the deepest crimson that he can only assume is human blood. Gallons of it by the looks of it. He stop his vehicle, exiting as cautiously as he entered. The air is so thick with decay it almost makes him vomit. He takes a breather-mask from his belt. His lungs are filled with the sweet aromatic puffs of lavender scented air as he draws his gun. He drops his googles before his eyes. The world goes a sickly green again as he picks up a shadow moving fast among the sparse bushes. He levels his weapon firing till his gun pisses metal. He ejects the spent one, replacing it with a fresh one from his belt. He inches closer to see what type of Drug Faction member he has tagged. His face recoils in horror before him. Lying in a spreading pool of red are a young woman and her eight month old son. She couldn't be anymore then sixteen. Her lifeless body flops to the ground as he tries to pick them up. There is no way he could have known who they were since the googles don't really give him an ample field of sight. In his mind he hears the raving of his conscious about how they were innocent and that they didn't have to die. He tries to justify his actions to himself as the whole world is bathed in a harsh white light. The goggles amplify the light a thousand fold like a hundred tiny daggers stabbing into his eyes causing him to stumble backwards blindly. |
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