Where did things go wrong?

I asked myself, staring into the distance. 

Education… apprenticeship… tech school… it was all smooth sailing. All it should have taken was some application and hard work. I'd done it right! 

I looked to my left, a wall covered from floor to ceiling with photographs. They were all veterans of the war. People who were already processed through this facility, and released from service. 

Heroes, we're all heroes. But why us? 

All throughout history, at least to our knowledge, nothing as perplexing as dimensional tears occurred. That was our generation's war, no others.

Did it start with the pandemic? 

I rotated the can if snuff in my hands, using it to occupy myself. The anxiety of sitting still was kept at bay with it.

It was around the time the last Mars rover landed. Nothing seemed amiss, all the major news cycles continued airing story after story…

I knew the answer, but somehow the contemplation on the war's start was calming. It was easier for me to rationalize the war as a 'what to avoid' subject. It was less so a warranted topic outside of that. There was no point in discussing how things were now. Nothing could change that. But it was infinitely more comforting to think 'we can stop this from happening again'

It all started with a media blackout of a particular country as far as anyone can remember. It was well before anyone could truly discover it, so by the time your average person learned of events the original perpetrator was already in a sea of irradiated cobalt.

But of all things, it could never stop what occurred next from changing humanity forever. 

The rifts…

Dimensional tears, the match point of scientific exploration outside of space travel. That was the widely established theory of the war's cause. Regardless of how logical it seemed or not. The one tear was all it took to throw everything into chaos. Theories on the wider scale of the 'Rifting' was left to two theories. Either A, it was a result of multiple coordinated versions of the original rift. Or B, the single original rift destabilized our realm enough to make a series of additional tears throughout the world.

What did they expect? Some new frontier? Or if it was intentional, did they believe it would enable conquest? The next world super-power?

Within the first year the world failed to adequately address the threat, caught too much within its old ways of political scheming and economic conquest. By the time anyone truly considered the threat seriously, rifts had already formed throughout the world. 

Sungrinders were the first to show their horrifying capabilities, emerging within multiple metropolitan areas, decimating anything in their path. In the panic, numerous countries warred with each other in the belief that the sudden explosive carnage was the fault of the work of conventional weapons. Then, as the world was recovering from the trauma of the initial cataclysm, waves of mutated beasts spilled from the ruins. It was as if the earth itself voided the monster's of hell from its gullet.

Six years. I was still young. There's no way this could compare to those before me, but still…

I looked to my hand, planted on my knee as I anxiously bounced it up and down. It was the only leg I could still move in such a manner. The other was so unresponsive that I struggled to feel so much as a warm bath. It had no nervous perception, the doctors laying claim to its near amputation.

Six long years, I fought. Cultists, monster's, and looking into worlds I could barely comprehend. The damage is done, and I can scarcely jog along, let alone fight. 

My body was strong, but not so strong as to deny what nature never intended to heal. It was a miracle I was even able to walk. On each continent it was a labor for those tasked to close each portal one after another. A taxing event, witnessed many times over by myself and all who I bore arms with. The sight of that world, of peering through a tear in the very fabric of space. To see the world, and the beasts who it bore. With each rift I witnessed, or closed, an unbelievable wave of relief washed over me. But it was short-lived, never a true sense of safety. And in its place, fear still permeated. It lingered and haunted me, even in my dreams.

It's done now. 

I exhaled, looking to the ceiling. 

Think about the clerk. She was talking you up something big, right? 'A Silver star?' She says. And what with the wink she passed me? She's been gone for a while now, she said she was making copies but wasn't that-

My impatience forced me to turn my head, looking from the ceiling to the door she passed through.

Fucking janitors closet. She is not making fucking copies, she's been in there for ten minutes…

I clenched my jowls, shaking my head.

Come on, get up! 

My leg bounced incessantly.

Get up. You've fucked plenty, why are you scared now? Of getting close?

I shook my head.

Come on, do it, for Lucas-

A glimpse of one of my closest friends flashed in my mind, and along with it, a sense of nausea.

Don't think about it. Anything but that in my thoughts.

I stared up, thinking of each person I'd began my journey with. I thought of who was left. So many I would never see again, with only those I barely knew to greet me now. 

"Ai-"

I heard the Lt killed himself last month…

My sight was blurring, the heavy ringing in my ears becoming all the more evident with each pulse. 

"Ai-n, hel-"

… how long till I-

"Staff Sergeant!"

Cold!

"Ah, shit, wha- wha? What's up?"

I shook my head, sitting up within my seat to nearly be face to face with the clerk. She'd broken through my distraction with an ice cold can of soda, holding it to the side of my neck.

The chair I sat in creaked under my weight as I sat up. 

"Oh, sorry."

She looks upset.

I slowly accepted the can, looking over her as she sat back down.

I wasn't imagining things…

She'd clearly spent some time away, leaving me to wonder how long I'd exactly spaced out. She seemed irritated, a light flush mixed with uneven breath hinting at the length of her absence. Her cordial demeanor from earlier was absent, replaced with one of sympathy and distance. The same as myself, she now avoided eye contact.

"It's fine, everyone's tired after all. It being a Friday at least helps that, right?"

I remained silent, leaning back into my chair.

"Sorry."

She forced a small chuckle as she apologized.

What for? What's the population of this city now? Three thousand? There used to be thirty times that. 

"It's fine, not the first time."

The clerk did a double take, looking at me with a face of shock before hesitantly returning to her work.

"It's hard to go to a bar and meet someone when ninety percent of the people who would have been there are dead. Even more so when the ones left over won't go anymore."

I nodded, looking at the monitor.

"Yeah, I know."

"Well, Staff Sergeant Aidan, it was nice working on your case… and it's an honor to meet someone who closed a rift."

The clerk slowly stacked a few remaining papers before stapling them. Facing me, she handed a sealed packet over with a small sticky note at the top.

"Your pension should begin on the first of next month, if the deposit doesn't go through there is a sheet inside with contacts for the financial department."

We both stood, the clerk holding her opposite hand out as I took the packet.

"It was nice meeting you."

"Likewise."

We shook hands before parting. It was rather strange, the weight of service gone. I didn't have to show up to work, formation, meetings, briefs. There were no obligations left. I was free to go about as I pleased, retired at twenty five. All that was left was to collect a pension while I faded into obscurity.

With what little there was left to handle now finished, I walked to the entrance. The stale air of the office was pleasing, at least with its cool air in contrast to the oppressive humid summer that awaited outside. The windows fogged as I opened the door, the moisture in the air immediately condensing on the glass. Moving across the parking lot, it was a miracle that in the same stride, I never dehydrated myself. I was already sweating through my shirt. It was maybe one hundred yards to reach the truck that sat at the parking lots far edge. An older work truck that I placed what time I could into. It sat there, loaded with half of what I owned to my name in a small office parking lot. 

Keys… keys…

The lock made an audible 'clunk' in a typical nineties fashion for a truck, the door driving it home as I swung it open with a load creak.

Jesus- needs lithium grease. Half a shot out ear and its still annoying.

I tossed the packet onto the center console, emptying my pockets on top of it. My cell phone, wallet, a pocket knife, snuff, everything to make driving just a bit more relaxing. 

Up we go!

I grunted as I lifted myself up using the 'oh shit' handle and the seat. The suspension creaked with the dropping of my weight onto the aging leather seats; and with a heavy handed pull the door closed with a 'ker-chunk'.

"You're broken-"

I placed my cellphone in my lap.

"Recieving a pension-"

Next I tossed the keys into the ignition, switching it to the on position so the heating element in the intake would warm the air.

"And you have nowhere to go…"

I looked at a picture clipped to the sunvisor. The last picture of my family before the war. I'd be damned before I placed each of their dod photos up instead. The last thing I wanted to think of was them passing the same as all my friends. My brothers and sisters I fought with. 

"And no one to care."

I stared at that photo for a few minutes, the beeping of the trucks ignition telling me it was ready to start breaking me from my mental slump.

It's ready… should get something to eat, did I even have breakfast?

I relaxed in the chair, opening the can of snuff and forcing a pouch in between my lips and gums. The nicotine would serve to at least keep hunger away until I arrived somewhere. All that was left was to choose what I craved.

Best throw the packet in the consol-

I tilted my head for a second, looking at the sticky note from before.

'Sorry if I was a bit straight forward, lunch sometime maybe?'

Below the scribbled note was a phone number and a name.

'Kat'... 

I leaned back, looking at the brick wall to the office.

She was nice… and cute.

I mulled over the thought.

A coward if you don't… you've avoided talking to people for six months so far…

I lifted my phone, opening the contacts.

'Kat', phone number 9-0-

The number was entered, a lingering anxiety creeping from deep down as I opened the messenger. 

Coward.

I looked out the window, the sight of the town in the background through the fenced parking lot. After all I'd seen, it made it hard to talk to a single living being outside of working. All I'd done since the rotations began; since we closed the last rift. It was all wandering on an unending road trip trying to act as if nothing happened. As if entire geographical sections of the world weren't torn apart by otherworldly Fauna or mutations. Bears growing to the size of a horse, elk that competed with moose in size and violent tendency, birds that looked almost devolved to the triassic. The paid bounties on the straggling mutated humans that ran feral through the landscape. That's what I spent the last six months doing; joining dozens of other veterans who'd found only one purpose post war, killing the monster's that remained. It didn't bring closure however, not when each of us was picked off one by one in their pursuit. If it wasn’t being mauled to death, one of us would succumb to infection and become a monster as well. 

What if I have to see that again… I couldn't bare it.

I looked to the phone one last time, a simple text ready to be sent.

'Hey Kat, Its Aidan, want to get some lunch together?'

I thought for another moment, spitting into an empty crumpled water bottle.

"Fuck it, why not. Let's start you up and we'll ask her, how 'bout it old girl?"

I patted the dash of the truck before turning the ignition. 

I need to try, right?

I wanted to send the text, I wanted to reach out to someone at the least. However, all I received next upon the whining sound of a low torque starter, was a sudden and oppressive concussive force. It was just a split second. And then nothing. Darkness.