Work Text:
You fall asleep.
This is nothing new. You’re always falling asleep on the job. But you decide today that you’re not feeling up to getting yelled at and being forced to run laps, so you scour the base until you find a hiding spot at your post that's good enough to go unnoticed (it isn’t; you get kicked a few times as you doze, someone hovering over you and aggressively mouthing “get back to work,” but you ignore them).
The sergeant is getting progressively annoyed with you and you eagerly await the day he’ll kick your ass out of this pathetic excuse of a colony. You’ve broken as many rules as you can just to get court-martialed and off this rock, but for some reason, you’re still here. The dust is everywhere. Every day is the same shade of grey in the base, the ground, even the clouds. The locals are always scared and watch the soldiers patrolling their towns with shadowed expressions. Witch hunts for traitors or moles occur; the occasional riot breaks out; some revolutionary gets it into their head that they can take their guns against the UNSC’s.
You don’t care much for how your unit handles these things. You see people trying to live their lives on the outer colonies, angry at their treatment and the way they’re taken advantage of. You sympathize, sort of, but mostly you want to go home and go back to ignoring galactic politics, back to a life when you had things that mattered to you. There’s never enough food and there’s too many hours in the day, and your superiors demand that all those hours be put to something useful, something productive.
The last time you were productive was when your mother left you and your little sister and you found yourself playing guardian at fourteen to someone you almost resented for being the favorite child. You were productive for four years straight, juggling school and two jobs before finally dropping competitive surfing and taking up a third job because there wasn’t enough food on the table for the two of you, even with the checks your mother sent in the mail from the circus. You ate more to deal with the stress from homework and the lack of parents. When you started filling out college apps, you hardly ate at all, scrounging your money together until you had enough to pay for five applications. Your weight fluctuated and your health was poor. It didn’t matter because you’d done it before to take the standardized tests needed to get into college in the first place.
By some miracle, you got into Harvard University, and Kaikiana demanded that you didn’t throw away a chance like that just to take care of her. You got scholarships, grants, and loans and somehow it was enough money to let you attend. So you left Honolulu and studied marine biology because you loved the reefs, then you switched to law, and then you switched to business. Your diet was steady and you had good, motivated friends; you smoked weed and went to parties; you attended study groups and crammed for exams. You somehow didn’t slip up along the way and at graduation you were handed a shiny degree with your name on it. The school’s president shook your hand and Kaikiana was the only family that attended. She cheered for you like she had during your surf competitions eight years prior, before your mother left.
Then immediately, you got drafted because there was and still is a war going on and they don’t give a shit that you were a twenty-two year old, fresh-eyed graduate caring for a sixteen year old sister with a rebellious streak and a penchant for self-destruction, they need (want) your body and the skills they beat into your head. They don’t want the smart mouth or the dry attitude or the lack of discipline. You do everything you can to get out and back to your sister, who you know is waiting for you.
So you sleep, dreaming of soft sand between your toes, salt on your skin, and sunlight glittering on the bluest water you’ve ever seen. You dream of lū‘au—the rich smell of kālua pig being roasted on a spit, the light, sweet taste of poi on your tongue, the vibrant green synthetic grass skirts, and the 'olapa, skin dark like volcanic rock, as their hips sway and their arms reach towards the sky. You dream of a maroon surfboard and cresting waves, vast coral reefs and an aging surf shack with a grass roof. You dream of a chubby little girl with a round face sitting on the porch of her hālau hula, dimples in her wide smile and a gap where a front tooth is missing, and she’s smiling at you like you’re her entire world, a proclamation of “my big brother is the best” dancing on her lips.
You wake up.
You ponder the uncanny quiet. You realize that you’ve disabled external audio and turn it back on.
The quiet continues. You wonder if your helmet is damaged and grunt as you stand up. You hear the dripping of water, or oil, or some other liquid—you’re not sure. At least your helmet works fine. You look around. The garage usually holds five Warthogs but two are missing from the far end. A body is slumped over in the driver’s seat of the one closest to you, a hole in the windshield, cracks spreading out from it like a spider’s web. The second car, as far as you can tell, is fine. The third has been blown backwards, propped up with its nose against floor and its tail leaning against the back wall. There are scorch marks on the floor the color of black chalk where the Warthog once sat and beneath the nose, surrounded by shattered glass, is a person, their face hidden by a fractured visor.
You approach the body in the first Warthog, shuffling over to the driver’s side to see who it is. There’s a steady drip of something hitting the floor and you want to believe it is water, or oil, or some other liquid, but when you reach the body you see its arm draped over the door, sleeve soaked through. Blood collects on the saturated gloved fingertips, beads and drops to the red puddle underneath.
“Hyuk,” you breathe out when you lift the body’s head and see the face. The visor is smashed and Hyuk’s features are mangled but you can still make out his thin lips, his pale skin, his slanted eyes—at least, the one that’s still intact. His right eye is open and blank, staring into the empty space over your shoulder, while his left is a gaping red hole and you feel sick because Hyuk is nineteen and supposed to be in college studying marine biology at Harvard like you did six years ago, not dead in a jeep with a bullet through his head.
(And you think maybe that’s why you befriended him—because you loved the reefs and you still love them, and he possessed that same love. You wish that science took less time to study because you would’ve stayed with it if it let you go home to your sister in four years instead of eight, but now you think you should’ve stayed with it anyway, since you would’ve been drafted regardless).
You flee from the garage and yank off your helmet, needing fresh air. The sharp, metal scent of blood hits you hard enough that you stumble and gag. The stench sticks to your throat, rests heavy on your tongue and fills your nostrils. You force your helmet back on over your head and try not to throw up in it.
Outside is worse than the garage. Corpses are everywhere—splayed out on the ground, impaled to the walls by glowing purple spikes, or slumped over railings. The grey ground is painted red and brown. You scour the base for someone—anyone—but it’s a goddamn slaughterhouse and your HUD shows no life signs other than your own. In the very front of the outpost, at the gates, your commanding officer’s head is sitting atop a spear driven into the dirt.
You rush to the garage again and climb into the second Warthog, switch on the ignition and drive. You drive and drive and you don’t realizing you’re heading into town until you’re halfway there, steel walls falling behind. You yank off your helmet and take in gulps of fresh air, sweat being cooled by the wind hitting your skin.
Nothing is audible except the roar of the engine and the wind. Your mind buzzes and there’s an awful feeling sitting heavy in your stomach. The world around you becomes a dull blur you can’t make sense of. You slow the Warthog as you approach the outside of town and from where you sit you taste the thick stench of blood in the air. Please be a dream, you think. Please, God, let it be a dream.
Your eyes water and sting—though you’re not sure what the cause is—as you leave the Warthog behind, parked on the side of the road, and walk into town. You pinch yourself for good measure, but nothing changes.
It’s an absolute bloodbath. Carcasses are strewn across the street, in their homes, in their cars. You find the broken forms of children and you keep seeing a little girl with dark, sun-kissed skin, long, wavy hair, and a dimpled smile. You cup your hands around your mouth and shout, “Is anyone here? Can anyone hear me?” and no one but the wind answers.
No one fucking answers.
You’re the only one.
Thousands of people and you’re the only one left.
You throw up in a gutter with half-dried liquid turning color from red to brown, and you can’t pretend that it’s water, or oil, or something else entirely. You drag yourself back to the Warthog in a daze and sit, hands clutching the wheel so tight you can’t feel your fingers anymore. You stare at the buildings silhouetted against a setting sun, orange and red and black. As an afterthought, you fiddle with the car radio. The voice that comes out of the speakers sounds tiny and far, far away, and you bring the microphone up to your mouth and say, “This is Private Dexter Grif.” It sounds like your voice isn’t even coming from your own lips and you miss the response—if you were even given one. “I’m. I am the sole survivor of my unit.” You swallow the lump in your throat, try not to think of how you could’ve died or how you managed to survived.
“Requesting evac,” you say. There’s a noise that sounds something like confirmation and you lean back into the Warthog’s hard leather seat and stare off into the distance.
Nothing. Everything you’ve done up to this point—everything you’ve achieved, all the work you’ve put in—has amounted to the sum total of nothing. These are the results. This is what you’ve been given for caring. For trying.
You wonder now if it’s worth doing anything at all.