WPCA - There's No Place like a War Zone

Alderick rubbed his head with a hand covered in blood. Whose, he didn't know. All he did know was that his head ached something fierce. There were screams, and what appeared to be scaffolding distributed on the ground in a fashion that just screamed new-age art and was funny; and as far as Alderick was concerned was that there really was screaming going on.

People weren't just screaming for the sake of making noise, they were yelling specifically at him. He eyed some of them in the kind of woozy disposition that generally belonged to drunken individuals. He couldn't quite make out the words, but the frantic way this one woman in an orange uniform of some sort was motioning for him to move away from his location, he got the gist of the situation, or at least hoped he did in some corner of his mind.

Standing on his feet rather unsteadily, he moved out from under falling debris and detritus to make his way toward a quickly thinning crowd of people. Alderick wondered where those people were going and why they were leaving so quickly. The orange-suited woman grabbed him by the upper arm and began to bodily yank, pull and shove him toward something that looked rather silvery to him.

Alderick didn't know it, but he had a kind of stupid smile plastered on his face that was making him the envy of everyone around him. He didn't know they were consumed with fear. How could he? He'd just woken up a moment ago, and as far as he was concerned, everything was going fine, despite the constant ruckus and the sounds of metal falling from the ceiling onto the concrete below to make twisted patterns that somehow were recognizable to Alderick.

He was shoved aboard the silvery thing, which manifested itself to be a plane of some sort, but with the shortest wings Alderick had ever seen for a plane of this size. He was going to ask how the hell they planned on getting off the ground without a runway, but any attempt at making noise came out in a gurgle that probably sounded like a baby about the spit up.

The orange-suited woman again appeared in his field of vision and forcibly pushed Alderick into a seat. She strapped him in as though he were a baby, then sat down next to him and strapped herself in as well. A voice came over the intercom, but Alderick couldn't make sense of it. He began to wonder if his ears and vocal cords might have been damaged, and this sent him into a panic. The events going on around him weren't making him go mad, it was the thought of never being able to speak or hear again that were.

Those who were around him just thought he was finally coming around to the gravity of the situation, but that was as far from the truth as you could get. He was just worried that he would never again be able to ask that waitress on the 5th and Jordan Ave. coffee shop for his usual; to flirt with her momentarily as he mad his way off to...work?

Alderick suddenly found himself at an impasse. He became silent, his face screwing itself into a sort of feeble attempt at concentration. The rotors of the helicopter spun, but Alderick was certain he was on a plane, wasn't he? And the woman in the orange suit next to him was a flight attendant. She would give him directions to wherever he needed to go.

There was something about a secret code to save the world or something hidden away in the back of his brain. No, wait, that was a movie, no his life, but Alderick had the distinct feeling it might have been his life at some point. Or at least he felt he had partaken in such a thing at some point.

"Shut the hell up already!" someone screamed from behind him, or was it beside him?

Alderick finally opened his eyes to the world around him, and noted that truly, he was in a helicopter and not a plane as he had first suspected. Second, he had been moaning madly which was why the remark 'Shut the hell up already' had been made and aimed in his general direction.

Also, the group of people around him weren't suited in orange; oh no, they were clothed in desert camouflage and carried rifles of a sort that Alderick couldn't recognize, although he was certain that they might be Windsor FSU-4's, considering they had grenade launchers slung under the barrel of the weapon in a most ominous fashion. Why he knew this, Alderick couldn't begin to understand, but he did.

As an afterthought, Alderick decided to turn his head and regard the woman who had shoved him on board the helicopter, to thank her and ask for her phone number. Instead he was shocked to find a petite looking man, with a gruff face and the most devilish looking brown eyes he had ever seen.

"What're you looking at, chump?" the man said in a very disgusting sounding voice. Alderick thought it was like the sound of an animal vomiting or something, real throaty and completely unpleasant to hear.

Everything was completely different from what he had imagined things as. Deciding to actually look through the porthole behind his head--was he on a ship?--Alderick did confirm he was in the air, and that the rotor churning above his head rhythmically were helicopter blades and not something else. The view afforded by the porthole in the side of the copter was one of desolation. Far below and behind him black clouds rose, churning and broiling into the air in a most ominous fashion. Tangles of wreckage lay strewn about. Twisted girders and malformed metal siding and sheets with small fires splashed around for effect.

And during the way back, all Alderick would do was wonder why he too wore desert camouflage like the others around him, and bemoan why he couldn't speak in a sobbing tone. His wondering was cut short when a missile fired from a hidden SAM took out the copter he had been escaping in. Alderick would be mourned as a hero, when in fact, he had cracked under the pressure. A kid in combat that left the world in a blaze of fire and incandescent gas to rain wreckage across the desert landscape.