Unmarked Division

As soon as the last person, C, entered the hospital, the group quickly closed the door. Inside of the hospital, the group finally had a moment to rest. A medic checked the soldier from the APC, and the others sat down on the chairs. C sat down as well, out of breath from the run towards the hospital, when he was approached by one of the soldiers.

"Hey, its been a while, hasn't it?" the soldier said with a familiar voice, "Good to see you again."

C looked up at the soldier and realized that it was one of his friends from before the invasion.

"Fredrick! I didn't notice you at all through the fight." C replied, "You're alive! I haven't seen you since, all the way back in the office!"

"Yeah. Its been over a week since then. I was worried sick!"

C suddenly felt uneasy, not only at the fact that a week had somehow passed, but also because he realized his memory was affected in a significant way from being knocked out twice.

"What's wrong?" Fredrick asked, noticing C's expression change.

"Well, its just that I sort of… forgot my name."

Fredrick smirked a little, "You forgot your name? What have you been calling yourself then?"

"I can only remember… C."

"Well then, we could just call you that." Fredrick decided, "It fits you better anyways."

C was puzzled by the sudden change in name, but that was the least of his concerns. "If creatures like the one outside are prowling about, then is F truly safe in that bunker?" C thought. Then, C remembered what F had said earlier; where she would venture out and look for him if he took too long. C tried to remember exactly how she spoke, and somehow felt an odd, nostalgic feeling, as if he had a memory of something familiar that instantly slipped away. He knew that it wasn't just his name that he had forgotten.

"You okay, C?" Fredrick said.

C was snapped back to his senses, before one of the soldiers ordered for them to move out. C stood up and followed Fredrick.

"Hey, Fredrick." C called, making Fredrick look back in response, "I have been sort of… on and off for the past week, ever since the aliens invaded. Can you catch me up on what has happened?"

"So far..." Fredrick said without questioning, "We've just been sent out on a couple of scouting missions. I managed to become a soldier quickly, because they were short on personnel and because I worked as a police officer before, and already had training with firearms. Other then that, not much has happened so far; even considering that we are currently being invaded by aliens. We've just been trying to survive, basically."

"Aren't we all?"

"Quiet."

"…What about the types of aliens? What aliens have been seen so far?"

"Not much; there are the parasites, the chargers, and the reaper. We've tried to save people who were turned into zombies by the parasites, but killing the parasite just makes them force their tails out of the peoples' heads, rupturing… basically everything in their skull."

"And the other two?"

"Once again, still in the dark. We try to stay away from them, once we learned that they are able to survive hits from anti-tank missiles. Especially the reaper."

"Another one as well…" C muttered to himself.

The conversation almost stopped there, when Fredrick finally remembered something after a couple minutes of silence.

"Oh, we also learned about another type of alien recently." Fredrick said, with unmatched confidence in his voice, "Through radio calls from soldiers on the reconnaissance in the city yesterday, we've managed to categorize a new type of alien creature. We were able to gauge the physical appearance and intelligence of these aliens from what happened over the radio."

C listened closely as Fredrick told him about the recent event.

"A group of soldiers sent to study the current status of the city, once the reaper left. Throughout the first few hours of the mission, they recorded no signs of movement or hints of life in the city. However, after about two hours in, things went awry really fast." Fredrick paused, helping the other soldiers open a rusted door before continuing, "And… the group started to hear eerie sounds coming from the block near them. I heard the sounds myself, since I was one of the people who had to listen and write down what was said over the radio. They sounded like… grinders, shredding down metal or something of that sort. Then, in just half an hour after that, most of the radios suddenly shut off; except for one, which had still been knocked off of the frequency. After they fixed it, that one soldier reported that they all felt a shockwave, and that almost all of their electronic devices were shut off. It was an like an EMP, but it came from outside the group."

"Wait." C interrupted, "The aliens were equipped with EMP devices?"

"Its more likely that they had either natural EMPs or electric disrupters built into them." Fredrick answered before going back to the story, "Anyways, the group had to stay close to that one soldier to keep in contact with us. Before long, we started to hear gunfire, so we asked for an update on what was happening. The soldier said that they had come in contact with creatures that had long, slender limbs, five limbs in total, and were jumping building to building above them." Fredrick paused for a brief moment, "And, these aliens, they didn't just run straight into the soldiers. They had plans; strategies. The soldiers reported that they attacked in groups with a hit-and-run method, and that the aliens would run in a zig-zag when being shot at. These creatures had infrastructure in their groups: they were there for a reason."

"What do you mean?" C asked, before piling on another question, "What happened to the soldiers?"

"These aliens managed to outsmart the group, and the group was forced to split into threes to cover each other's blind-spots. But even then, the soldiers were picked off one-by-one, either by being struck down by the aliens or by being shot by what they described as a 'corkscrewing hook,' as odd as that sounds. We were… taken aback, for the lack of a better phrase, by how quickly the soldiers were picked. The one with the radio was killed in the middle of combat, so we don't know of their fates."

Fredrick's face quickly turned from a look of melancholy to an expression of worry, "What surprised us the most, however, happened after the radio was dropped. It was still on, so we were able to hear one of the aliens walk up to it before the transmission stopped."

C had a slight shake in his voice, "These aliens… are intelligent enough to understand how a radio works?"

"Unfortunately." Fredrick replied after a sigh.

Another period of silence emerged in the group, before it was broken when they reached a metal door that blocked their path through the hospital.

"Did hospitals always have doors this strong?" A soldier said as he tried to pull it open. 

The doors were locked shut, and were extremely sturdy, proven when multiple soldiers attempted to move them at once. The group decided to plant an explosive on the doors, a fruitless effort that only put them at risk of being heard by nearby creatures, after the explosive merely dented the metallic barriers.

"We'll use up too much resources to open them at this rate." One of the soldiers claimed, "Lets just find a way around them."

The group backtracked, and came back to a room that branched out into numerous hallways. C did not remember the room, and guessed that he was too focused on Fredrick's story when they passed it. Most of the group took a short break, while some of the soldiers looked at a map detailing the layout of the hospital. C passed time by fiddling with the various switches and parts on his rifle, as it was the first M4 that he had ever even held. Fredrick soon joined him and helped label each part and what they did. 

The soldiers decided on a new route through the hospital: through the storage rooms. On the map, the layout of the storage room was blurred, but the outline of it could be made out from under the map's legend: it was unusually large, taking up nearly a quarter of the structure's area. The soldiers mapped out a rough path through it, and told the group that they were heading out. One of the soldiers kicked open the storage door after several other attempts to unlock it. The soldier then took out a flashlight and beamed it into the darker interior.

The storage area was unusually dark, especially compared to the other rooms in which the lights were fully functional, and were filled with dust. The cramped rooms were almost completely filled with large wooden boxes and shelves, allowing only a narrow walkway through.

Being forced into single-filed lines only added to the confined feeling of the rooms. After going through the first few rooms, the group stumbled out into a single, much larger room. The group was finally able to breathe normally, and spread out to give each other space. There was a temporary stop, with a few of the people resting by either sitting down or leaning on the sturdy shelves that lined the room. The soldiers had stopped to check the map again, but most of the storage room was cut off from view.

"Fredrick, can you tell me more about what had transpired the past few days?" C asked during the downtime, "What about the other countries, are they still fighting?"

Fredrick stared down at the floor for a moment, trying to remember something, before finally answering, "Most of the larger countries were almost completely destroyed in just three days, the ones we don't have intelligence on are the smaller ones, but it is probably safe to assume that they also fell in suit. If I remember correctly; America, Russia, and Japan were the last "big" nations to fall. Although I've heard that Australia and other island nations might've held up for a while longer. In terms of government, that is."

"America… fell already?" C asked.

"Several days ago, we lost contact with the federal government, as did all other military divisions. There's only one way to look at that."

C looked down and scratched his head. "Several days ago? All the nations torn apart in a few days?" He thought to himself.

Fredrick scratched his head, combing through his brain for any other information, "Oh, I almost forgot about the gunships."

"Gunships?" C asked, wanting more detail on the subject.

"The alien gunships. I think they were named that because they are similar to our gunships. Well, in terms of weaponry of course. I started to hear about them only a couple of days ago, but I heard that they were the main ones to attack bigger cities when the invasion started."

"How do they look like?"

"They look like… uh… giant beetles. Just think of giant beetles with propellers."

Before Fredrick could explain anymore, the other soldiers ordered the group to move out. The group wandered randomly through the storage rooms for a few minutes before they finally made it back onto a location in the map.

"If I am correct, then we should be here - close to the exit." One of the soldiers stated.

Exiting the storage rooms and moving hastily to the exit, the group eventually stumbled onto an obstacle. In one of the halls, a large pile of debris blocked the path towards the exit, appearing to be a chunk of the upper story caving in. The group was forced to take a detour, through several of the medical rooms closer to the back portion of the hospital.

The medical rooms were oddly eerie, with a faint scent of iron coming up only temporarily from time-to-time. C peered around, noticing that nearly all of the supplies on the rooms' shelves were knocked over. While barren of any external mess, the surgery beds positioned near the middle of the rooms all seemed to be rusted and bent to one side. During the walk past, the only noise that could be heard was the clanking of the soldiers' gear and the occasional misplaced footstep from one of the civilians. No one talked through most of the way through the rooms, which only put C more on edge. At the back of C's mind, he expected an ambush, but he knew that the parasites would not be able to find a way in so easily.

After a while of walking in silence through the medical rooms, one of the soldiers called out, "We're in the clear! The exit is right here!"

The group stumbled out of a heavily rusted door, and saw the double exit-doors down a straight hallway. With a immense feeling of relief, now that they were out of the hospital, C went outside with the other members of the group. They stumbled out into a large parking lot, adorned with an array of empty cars and motorcycles. The lot branched off into two roads, but one of the roads were covered in debris and only lead back into the town. Most of the people in the group decided to rest near the entrance, but a couple of soldiers went around to investigate the vehicles around the lot.

"Look for any vehicles that we can potentially use." One of the soldiers commanded.